The Definition of Success, Being Playful, Having Everything But Enough

One Insight From Me

A satisficer looks for “good enough” and moves on. An optimizer (or maximizer) looks for the best option and keeps searching. Optimizing sounds smart. In real life, it often makes things harder.

The optimizer keeps moving the goalposts. First, good is not enough. Then great is not enough. Then even great feels wrong because maybe something better exists. Decisions drag on. Doubt creeps in. Progress slows.

The satisficer decides, commits, and lives with the trade-offs. Less stress. More momentum. That's why, often, ​fewer choices make us happier​—and we should always ​subtract before adding​ things into our lives.

Sometimes, the best decision isn’t the perfect one. It’s the one you stop thinking about and start living with.

Three Ideas From Other People

What's the definition of success? A few simple disciplines practiced every day. What's the definition of failure? A few errors in judgment repeated every day.

Jim Rohn

To be playful is not to be trivial or frivolous, or to act as though nothing of consequence will happen. On the contrary, when we are playful with each other we relate as free persons, and the relationship is open to surprise; everything that happens is of consequence. It is, in fact, seriousness that closes itself to consequence, for seriousness is a dread of the unpredictable outcome of open possibility. To be serious is to press for a specified conclusion. To be playful is to allow for possibility whatever the cost to oneself.

A finite player is trained not only to anticipate every future possibility, but to control the future, to prevent it from altering the past. This is the finite player in the mode of seriousness with its dread of unpredictable consequence.

Infinite players, on the other hand, continue their play in the expectation of being surprised. If surprise is no longer possible, all play ceases.

​Finite and Infinite Games​ by James P. Carse

Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller were at a party at a billionaire's extravagant estate. Kurt said, "Wow! Look at this place! This guy has everything!" Joseph said, "Yes, but I have something he'll never have... Enough."

​Anything You Want​ by Derek Sivers

One Question to Reflect On

Where in your life are you chasing “the best” and quietly making things harder, when “good enough” would let you move forward today?