How do you know what you want?

One of my friends recently wrote on Facebook “how do you know what you want?” and I ended up writing a fairly long response. Posting it here, too.


You know, one of my friends just asked me this too, and I don’t know the answer for sure.

I think part of it was after a young lifetime of being a perfectionist and also a people-pleaser, I had to get good at satisficing or I was going to burn out. Going to progressively more difficult environments (high school to college to a job) meant that I was surrounded by an increasing concentration of people smarter than me, and that was something my ego had to adjust to. But learning that I actually *wasn’t* always the smartest person in the room also freed me from having to always Be The Very Best. I could just be Good Enough, and that was okay too.

So I was able to apply that to my own decisions as well. Is this thing the Absolute Best Option I Could Possibly Choose? Well, maybe, maybe not. But the marginal benefit of obsessing over Relentless Optimization is so stressful to me that I had to Just Pick Something.

And now that I think more about this: I think I cut my teeth on this skill with choosing restaurants with friends as a young adult. I get hangry when I don’t eat (it doesn’t seem to be a disorder, I just have/had a fast metabolism), so when people started dithering about where to go, it meant that I was risking a fainting+nausea spell. So I started doing Executive Decision Making for the whole group, and for the most part it turned out fine. Some people don’t like me telling them what to do, but Oh Well Their Loss.

Like a lot of skills, practicing in small ways helps build up the muscle (literal or metaphorical) for bigger tasks.

Anyway, IDK if this is what you were asking about, but I hope it helps! ❤

Enough is, in fact, enough: a meditation on Pieces of Flair

Today I was coloring in a bookmark that had the quippy little motivational message, “A Winner is a Dreamer who Never Gives Up.” — Nelson Mandela

“A Winner is a Dreamer who Never Gives Up.”

Nelson Mandela

And it made me think: is that really accurate? No, it’s not. Or, more to the point: it’s incomplete. A winner is a dreamer that never gave up and also scored better than all of the other dreamers who also never gave up.

But that doesn’t make the non-winner any less worthy of respect and admiration!

I have always hated the old “joke” about “What do you call the guy who graduates last in med school? Doctor!” Frankly, I don’t care what my doctor’s rank in a classroom setting 30 years ago was; I care that they know enough to be a doctor. If this person was actually too stupid to be a doctor, they would not have graduated.

Likewise, and I think we’re better at recognizing this side of things, an Olympian who doesn’t win a medal is still a goddamn Olympian. The person who finishes last in a marathon still ran a goddamn marathon. That’s far more than any of the armchair haters will ever accomplish.

Being told you have to be the best just to be good enough is a stupid (and, frankly, toxic) attitude to take. Do the thing. Do it well. Don’t worry about your relative ranking compared to others.


(Bonus note: this is also what I told my fellow new parents when my daughter was a 99th percentile chonker. Everyone has to be somewhere on the percentile chart, and every percentile has to be filled. It’s just the pigeonhole principle. It’s not a referendum on the quality of your baby.)

The bookmark. Is this a Mandela Mandala?

Satisficing: you don’t have to give 100% of yourself

Today I saw this Instagram video about how “give 100%” doesn’t mean you have to give 100% of yourself, but rather give 100% of your available resources.

It’s sort of like looking at your gross income vs your net income (after taxes) vs your take-home pay (after retirement, savings, investment, etc are taken care of). (Note that some people use that collection of words differently!)

The fact that I do NOT have to spend my entire being on Being The Best I Can Possibly Be is something I figured out in my twenties, and in my mind it’s closely linked to the concept of “Satisficing.” Basically, that’s a portmanteau of Satisfy and Suffice. Something that is “good enough” but “not optimal” would fall into this category, because it’s not possible to fully optimize everything ever. You would just burn out.