Below, a few quotes from The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less – Barry Schwartz.
“CHOOSING WISELY BEGINS WITH DEVELOPING A CLEAR UNDERSTANDING of your goals. And the first choice you must make is between the goal of choosing the absolute best and the goal of choosing something that is good enough.
If you seek and accept only the best, you are a maximizer.”
[…]
“The alternative to maximizing is to be a satisficer. To satisfice is to settle for something that is good enough and not worry about the possibility that there might be something better. A satisficer has criteria and standards. She searches until she finds an item that meets those standards, and at that point, she stops.”
[…]
“Our expectation was confirmed: people with high maximization scores experienced less satisfaction with life, were less happy, were less optimistic, and were more depressed than people with low maximization scores.”
[…]
“Thus perfectionists, like maximizers, seek to achieve the best. But I think there is an important difference between them. While maximizers and perfectionists both have very high standards, I think that perfectionists have very high standards that they don’t expect to meet, whereas maximizers have very high standards that they do expect to meet.”
[…]
“Perfectionists may not be as happy with the results of their actions as they should be, but they seem to be happier with the results of their actions than maximizers are with the results of theirs.”
