Friday Blog

Optimal or Satisficing

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Mountain cabin by the lake

At the beginning of the current school year one of the professors in the Business division at Southwestern Adventist University announced they would be retiring at the end of the school year. Our search process began by identifying what our "ideal" candidate will look like - the degree(s) they have completed, the skills they posses, the experience they have gained, their relationship to the Adventist church, and the classes they are capable of teaching. Over the past several months we have received many applications for the position but none of them have met our ideal qualifications. I have learned over my 12 years teaching in higher education that this phenomenon is not uncommon - most job posting for professor positions have an "ideal" candidate description and a "will consider" candidate description. The ideal is what your "perfect" candidate will look like and the "will consider" is what you will settle for.

 
In decision theory (a subset of data analytics) this is the distinction between the optimal and satisficing outcomes - what is the best you can hope for vs. what will you be satisfied with. Satisficing solutions do NOT attempt to maximize objectives, instead they seek to exceed MINIMUM standards. This process is accomplished by establishing constraints that either must be met or can not be exceeded. Solutions are then evaluated based upon living within the boundaries of those constraints. Most models for decision theory do not solve for optimal, they only solve for satisficing. In our situation many of the candidates did not meet the constraints for minimum qualifications but several did leading us to interview those qualifying candidates and attempt to identify the best satisficing solution.
 
Interestingly most job seekers do not seek optimal employment but instead seek satisficing jobs (we see this documented in the roughly 80% of employees who are dissatisfied or unsatisfied with their work.) While they may WANT an optimal job they often settle for something far less. They feel stuck and unable to change their circumstances. Henry David Thoreau summed it up nicely in Civil Disobedience and other Essays when he said "the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." We spend our time trying to "find" happiness rather than simply being happy.
 
For many years when our children were young we spent our vacations rushing from one place to another where the destination was the ultimate goal. Regularly we would drive over 800 miles in a day (one time it was over 1,000.) In 2005 we flipped the script and planned a vacation to Southern California (our son wanted to go to Legoland in Carlsbad, California). On that trip we intentionally limited daily driving to under 300 miles and only exceeded that on two occasions - once leaving Yellowstone National Park and the other the last day of our trip driving from Colorado Springs, Colorado to Bismarck, North Dakota. We stopped a Mt. Rushmore, Devils Tower, Yellowstone, Grand Tetons, Great Salt Lake, Kings Canyon/Sequoia, Sacramento Zoo, Legoland, Sea World, San Diego Zoo/Wild Animal Park, Grand Canyon, Painted Desert, 4 Corners National Monument, Mesa Verde, and Pikes Peak (Lisa and the kids also went to Whit's End at Focus on the Family in Colorado Springs while I was in meetings!) For that trip it was all about the journey and not the destination.
 
I have often wondered if my relationship with God is focused too much on the destination and not enough on the journey. Instead of seeking for an optimal experience I settle for satisficing. In John 10:10 Jesus tells us that He came so that we might "have life, and have it more abundantly," In John 5:24 Jesus also states that if we hear His voice and believe Him we have "passed out of death and into life." This is present tense not future, God wants us to experience abundant life now not just sometime in the future! He wants us to experience the optimal life not just a satisficing one!
 
***Lisa and I often see pictures like this one and say "I could live there!" This photo is AI generated and not one I took, although it does depict part of what an optimal life might look like for me.***

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