The Power of “Good Enough”

By Olga Khazan

Over a decade ago, psychologist Barry Schwartz published what might be the ultimate psychological life-hacking tome, The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less.1Barry Schwartz： 巴里·施瓦茨，美国斯沃斯莫尔学院的社会心理学教授，2009年TED大会压轴演讲人，以博学和风趣征服观众；lifehacking： 提高个人生活技巧的；tome： （有学术价值的）巨著；The Paradox of Choice： Why More Is Less： 《选择的悖论》。In it, Schwartz argues that the modern world’s smorgasbord of options—Brawny or Bounty?Coke Zero or Diet? Major in sociology or anthropology?2smorgasbord： 大杂烩；Brawny： 和Bounty同为美国著名的纸巾品牌；Coke Zero： 零度可乐，低卡路里，主要针对男性消费者；Diet Coke： 健怡可乐，不含糖，主要针对女性消费者；anthropology： 人类学。—makes us less happy, not more. “Choice overload3overload： 超负荷。,” as he calls it, makes us question our decisions, set our expectations too high, and blame ourselves for our mistakes.

The book spawned the usual TED talks and counterintuitive Internet takes.4spawn： 引起；TED： 指technology，entertainment，design的缩写，即技术、娱乐、设计，是美国的一家私有非营利机构，该机构以它组织的TED大会著称，会议的宗旨是“用思想的力量来改变世界”；counterintuitive： 反直觉的，反直观的；take： n. 某人对某事的态度、看法。More recently, Schwartz has been interviewed in a variety of publications and platforms about how his advice holds up5hold up： 维持，坚持。10 years later.The rise of social media, he argues, has only heightened the agony6agony： 苦恼，痛苦。of decision-making through phenomena like FOMO (fear of missing out).

One of my favorite Schwartzisms is this: If you ever aren’t sure if you attended the very best party or bought the very best computer, just settle for7settle for： 满足于。“good enough.” People who do this are called “satis ficers,” and they’re consistently happier, he’s found, than are “maximizers8maximizer： 完美主义者。,” people who feel that they must choose the very best possible option. Maximizers earn more, Schwartz has found, but they’re also less satis fied with their jobs. In fact, they’re more likely to be clinically9clinically： 临床地。depressed in general.

选择越来越多，如同缤纷的大杂烩：大到所学专业，小到日常饮食，无一不需要我们做出选择。有人总在追求完美，希望得到最好的；有人却“得过且过”，知足常乐。面临选择，究竟哪种态度才能收获更幸福的人生？哪种态度对身心健康更加有益呢？心理学大师将为你揭秘。

The reason this happens, as Schwartz explained in a paper with his Swarthmore10Swarthmore（college）： 斯沃斯莫尔学院，位于宾夕法尼亚州斯沃斯莫尔镇，是美国著名文理学院之一。colleague Andrew Ward, is that as life circumstances improve, expectations rise. People begin comparing their experiences to peers who are doing better, or to past experiences they’ve personally had that were better:

As people have contact with items of high quality, they begin to suffer from “the curse of discernment11discernment： 辨别力，洞察力。.” The lower quality items that used to be perfectly acceptable are no longer good enough. The hedonic zero point keeps rising, and expectations and aspirations rise with it.12hedonic： 享乐的，快乐的；aspiration： 愿望。As a result, the rising quality of experience is met with rising expectations,and people are just running in place.13结果，生活体验质量的提高，伴随的是更高的期待，所以人们的生活状态其实在原地踏步。run in place： 原地跑。As long as expectations keep pace with realizations,people may live better, but they won’t feel better about how they live.

Schwartz’ solution, as he recently explained to the psychology blogger Eric Barker, is just to settle for something that’s acceptable—even if you know there’s likely something better out there:

Whenever you need a new laptop, call up one of your maximizer friends and say,“What laptop did you buy?” And you buy that laptop. Is it going to be the perfect laptop for you? Probably not. Is it going to be a good enough laptop for you? Absolutely. It takes you five minutes to make a decision instead of five weeks and it’s a “good enough”decision.

In a Q&A session on Reddit last year, Schwartz said people can generalize this concept by arbitrarily limiting the number of choices they’ll consider14Reddit： 一个社交新闻站点，其口号为：提前于新闻发生，来自互联网的声音；arbitrarily： 任意地，武断地。— five colleges, not 25—and“decide that all you need is a good enough X, not the best X,” he said. “‘Good enough’ is almost always good enough.” It’s helpful information to keep in mind right after, say, the debut of a dizzying array of shiny, new iterations of a popular consumer tech product.15记住这点将会非常有用，比如在一系列令人眼花缭乱的大众消费科技产品更新换代上市的时候。debut： 首次展出，初次推出（某种产品）；array：一大批，一系列；iteration： 迭代，反复。

It can be hard, in our culture, to force yourself to settle for “good enough.” But when it comes to happiness and satisfaction, “good enough” isn’t just good—it’s perfect.ELL