The 1956 Solution to Your 2026 Decision Problem
The search for the best is itself a cost. Most of us never account for it.
The 1956 Solution to Your 2026 Decision Problem
A piece published this week in The New York Times by David Epstein, author of Range, introduced me to Herbert Simon’s work in a new light. I have not stopped thinking about it since.
Simon won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1978. He coined the term satisficing (a portmanteau of satisfy and suffice) to describe the only rational approach to decision-making when information is incomplete and options are overwhelming.
He solved the prioritization problem sixty years ago.
We have spent the decades since building a world that makes his solution nearly impossible to apply. And the AI transition has made it harder still, not because the problem changed, but because the conditions did.
What Simon Actually Said
The search for the best is itself a cost. Most people forget to account for it. The optimal strategy is not optimizing. It is setting a good enough standard, stopping when it is met, and saving your cognitive resources for what actually matters.
Simon lived this. One brand of socks. One black beret. The same breakfast every day: oatmeal, half a grapefruit, black coffee. The same house for 46 years. Not because he lacked imagination. Because he understood that small decisions are a tax on the decisions that matter.
He was not alone. Steve Jobs wore one black turtleneck. Obama limited himself to gray or blue suits. Zuckerberg wears the same gray t-shirt. Einstein owned several versions of the same outfit. All of them cited the same reason: decision fatigue is real and trivial choices are a tax on important ones.
Simon was not being eccentric. He was being rational. These people just had the platform to make it famous.
Where are you spending decision-making energy on choices that any reasonable person in your role could make? That is the first place to apply Simon’s insight.
Our Ancestors Did Not Have This Problem
Here is what is easy to miss: Simon was not rediscovering ancient wisdom. He was describing a workaround for a historically recent problem.
Preindustrial decisions were constrained by geography, availability, and social structure. You married someone from your village. You ate what the season produced. You wore what you could make or afford. The constraint was the decision. There was no maximizing because there was no menu.
Epstein cites an economist who calculated that the consumer options available to people in modern economies exceed those of preindustrial societies by a factor of roughly 100 million. Our brains were not built for this menu. They were built for the village. Simon was not recovering something our ancestors knew intuitively. He was solving a problem they never had.
Why It Is Nearly Impossible in 2026
Because the entire infrastructure of modern life is optimized to make you maximize.
Every app, every platform, every recommendation engine is designed to show you one more option. The algorithm’s job is to keep you searching. Amazon shows you what other people bought. Netflix shows you what else you might like. Dating apps show you who else is out there. Social media functions as an infinite comparison engine — a curated highlight reel of everyone else’s career, relationship, home, and vacation that makes the very concept of good enough feel like settling.
The attention economy is built on the premise that the best is always one more scroll away. Simon’s solution requires opting out of a system that is actively, profitably working against it.
And now AI promises to help you optimize everything: your schedule, your diet, your wardrobe, your creative output. Epstein notes that if Simon was right, the hidden danger of these tools is that they will expand the menu of options and comparisons even further — making the search for the best feel not just possible but obligatory.
The Layer Simon Did Not Address
This is where I want to add something to Simon’s framework, because his solution assumes you can set the good enough standard and stop. That requires one thing: the cognitive space to make a conscious choice.
Ambient urgency makes that nearly impossible.
Ambient urgency is the chronic, low-grade sense that everything is urgent and nothing can wait, even when the calendar is clear. It is not burnout. It is the permanent background state that most leaders are operating inside right now. And it is self-replicating: leaders caught in it inadvertently push it downstream to their teams.
When everything feels existential - and for leaders navigating the AI transition, much of it genuinely is - every decision feels like it requires maximizing. The stakes seem too high for good enough. Good enough begins to feel like negligence.
Epstein cites research showing that maximizers are less satisfied with their decisions and their lives, more prone to regret, and more likely to compare themselves endlessly with others. Under normal conditions, that is a tendency. Under sustained ambient urgency, it is what the system produces in otherwise healthy, capable leaders.
Simon’s insight was correct. The condition we have created makes it nearly impossible to act on. Nearly impossible, not actually impossible. The leaders who find their way through are the ones who recognize the condition for what it is, create the space to make a conscious choice, and commit to what is good enough to move.
Where is the search for the best costing you more than the best is worth? That is the question ambient urgency makes it hardest to ask, and most necessary.
The Murakami Proof
Leaders face this exact trap in high-stakes decisions every day. The right choice is in front of them. The information is sufficient. But the search for certainty keeps them from committing. Epstein tells the story of a Haruki Murakami short story that captures what happens when that search goes too far.
A lonely boy and girl recognize they are perfect for each other. They talk for hours. Then a sliver of doubt creeps in. They decide to part and trust that if they are truly meant to be together, they will inevitably meet again.
They were perfect for each other. Years later, they pass in the street. Their memories have faded. They never meet again.
That is the Fear Test in literary form. The Fear Test is a question I use with leaders facing hard decisions under pressure: am I avoiding this choice because it is actually wrong, or because committing to it is hard? The boy and girl failed the Fear Test. The decision in front of them was right. The difficulty was not the decision. It was the commitment. The refusal to commit to the directionally correct choice in front of you, in search of certainty that never comes, is not wisdom. It is the maximizer’s tragedy.
Simon would not have been surprised. Whether you are searching for a dishwasher or a life partner or a strategic direction, set a good enough standard. Stop when it is met. Save your cognitive resources for what actually matters.
Three Questions Worth Asking This Week
Where are you maximizing when satisficing would serve you better?
Where is the search for the best costing you more than the best is worth?
Where is good enough not settling, but the most strategic choice available?
Simon died in 2001. The world he left behind has made his insight harder to apply with every passing year. More options, more comparisons, more tools promising to help you find the best of everything.
He would not have been surprised by any of it. And he would have worn the same socks anyway.
The path to better decisions does not run through more information. It runs through the willingness to stop searching before you have exhausted the options, and commit fully to what is good enough to move.
That is not a compromise. That is the strategy.
🟥