Of course, it’s impossible to perfectly ‘optimize’ your life, and you’ll end up making mistakes either way. But if you see failure as a learning opportunity, you can pivot toward where you want to go instead of beating yourself up over having stumbled a bit. Newsflash—everyone, absolutely everyone, messes up sooner or later.
It’s healthiest to embrace what’s happened and move on. Otherwise, you’ll end up feeling guilty and haunted by your past every step of the way.
Doing things ‘well enough’ instead of ‘perfectly’ can leave you with more time, energy, and resources for other endeavors so you can enjoy yourself. Sometimes, trying to get the best possible outcome in every area of your life is, paradoxically, worse for you because you’ll end up exhausted. This approach, called ‘satisficing,’ is a decision-making strategy where you aim for satisfactory results rather than optimal solutions. And it's something that not only companies and managers do, but regular people can also apply to their lives to get good results without burning out. You can apply this when it comes to your finances, career, fitness, relationships, and, well, anything else you care about.
“Instead of putting maximum exertion toward attaining the ideal outcome, satisficing focuses on pragmatic effort when confronted with tasks. This is because aiming for the optimal solution may necessitate a needless expenditure of time, energy, and resources,” Investopedia explains.
