Herbert Simon — Why the Best Choice Is Often “Good Enough”
Herbert Simon had an unusual career.
He helped create fields that barely existed when he entered them: artificial intelligence, cognitive science, organizational decision-making, and computer science. He won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics, yet much of his work challenged a basic assumption economists had long made:
People don't actually make decisions by evaluating every possible option and selecting the optimal one.
We couldn't even if we wanted to.
There are too many possibilities, too little information, and too little time.
Simon called this bounded rationality.
And from it came one of the most useful ideas for everyday life:
Satisficing.
The Problem With “Best”
Suppose you need to choose a new running shoe.
The optimizer asks:
“What is the best running shoe?”
That question sounds sensible.
But now you need to compare hundreds of shoes across cushioning, geometry, durability, weight, price, fit, injury history, terrain, reviews, and perhaps research evidence.
More information keeps arriving.
The decision gets harder rather than easier.
Simon noticed that humans usually solve this problem differently.
We establish criteria:
Comfortable. Fits properly. Appropriate for the intended running. Under $150.
Then we search until we find an option that satisfies those requirements.
We stop.
That's satisficing: satisfy + suffice.
It isn't laziness.
It's a recognition that searching has a cost too.
Optimization Has Hidden Costs
Imagine spending four hours finding a hotel that's $20 cheaper.
Technically, you've optimized the hotel expense.
But you've ignored the four hours.
Or spending weeks researching the perfect investment allocation when a diversified, low-cost portfolio could have been implemented immediately.
Or continually tweaking a YouTube thumbnail after the important elements are already good.
Or researching twelve parenting strategies when your family mostly needs one reasonable strategy applied consistently.
Optimization asks:
“Could this be better?”
The answer is almost always yes.
A more useful question is:
“Would making this better be worth what it costs?”
That changes everything.
Simon's Deeper Insight: Attention Is Scarce
Simon saw another consequence of an information-rich world remarkably early.
When information becomes abundant, attention becomes scarce.
Think about what that means today.
You have effectively unlimited:
news,
music,
books,
podcasts,
investment opinions,
parenting advice,
exercise programs,
clinical research,
YouTube videos.
The problem is no longer primarily access.
It's selection.
A person who consumes information indiscriminately can know more while thinking less.
So intellectual maturity increasingly requires deciding:
“What deserves my attention—and what deserves to be ignored?”
Ignoring intelligently is becoming a genuine skill.
The Practice: Define “Enough” Before You Begin
Pick one decision you're currently making.
Before researching another option, write your stopping rule.
For example:
I need three things:
It solves the primary problem.
It fits within my constraints.
There are no obvious major downsides.
If you find something satisfying those criteria, seriously consider stopping.
Because every additional hour spent moving something from 90% to 93% is an hour unavailable for something currently sitting at 20%.
Sometimes the best improvement to one part of your life is deciding another part is already good enough.
The Missing Question
We frequently ask:
“What's the best way to do this?”
Simon gives us a more sophisticated question:
“How good does this decision actually need to be?”
A surgeon choosing where to operate should optimize.
Choosing tonight's dinner probably shouldn't require a decision tree.
Wisdom isn't maximizing every decision.
It's knowing which decisions deserve optimization.
Thinking Gym — First-Principles Thinking
Today's five-minute exercise is called The Constraint Audit.
Choose one real problem from work, parenting, hobby, investing, or everyday life that currently feels difficult.
Write down your explanation:
“I can't ______ because ______.”
Now interrogate the second blank.
Suppose it's:
“I can't create more educational content because I don't have enough time.”
Minute 1 — Define the actual goal
Not make more content.
Perhaps the underlying goal is:
Help more people encounter and trust my expertise without requiring another hour of my time for each person.
That's different.
Minute 2 — Identify the physical constraints
What genuinely cannot be negotiated?
There are 24 hours.
Your direct work requires your presence.
Certain family responsibilities happen at fixed times.
Those are constraints.
Minute 3 — Find the invented constraints
Now look for assumptions disguised as reality:
A useful video needs to be polished.
Every piece of content needs to be original.
I need to sit down specifically to create content.
One idea should produce one piece of content.
Those aren't laws of nature.
They're design choices.
Minute 4 — Destroy one assumption
Pick one and deliberately make its opposite true.
What if:
One useful idea had to produce five pieces of content?
Now the problem becomes interesting.
Minute 5 — Build from what remains
Ask:
“Given only the constraints that are genuinely unavoidable, what would I design?”
Do this today with one actual problem.
First-principles thinking isn't primarily about being clever.
It's about noticing something surprisingly difficult:
Some of the walls surrounding a problem are concrete. Others are lines someone drew on the floor.
Before figuring out how to climb the wall, check which kind you're standing in front of.