Like many lawyers, I tend to assume that more research, more revisions, and more analysis is almost always a good thing. Recently, my colleague Warren Savage shared a podcast that challenged my thinking. In an episode of The Gray Area, host Sean Illing interviewed David Epstein about his book Inside the Box: How Constraints Make Us Better. During their conversation, Epstein discussed the work of Nobel Prize-winning economist Herbert Simon, whose research offered a surprisingly different way of thinking about decision-making.

Simon challenged the traditional notion that people carefully evaluate every possible option and choose the best one. He posited that real-world decision-makers often settle on solutions that are satisfactory rather than optimal because they lack unlimited time, information, and cognitive resources. He called this approach “satisficing,” a portmanteau that combines the words “satisfy” and “suffice.” Simply put, satisficing means choosing an option that is good enough to meet your needs rather than continuing an endless search for the perfect option.

Although Simon developed these ideas in the 1950s, they may be even more relevant today. We live in a world overflowing with choices. A simple online search for a household item can produce thousands of options, each with different prices, reviews, and shipping terms. Streaming services offer an almost endless number of movies and television shows, each accompanied by ratings and commentary. In this environment, satisficing is not a sign of lowering standards. It is often a practical necessity. Without some willingness to accept a solution that is good enough, we risk becoming trapped in an endless search for the perfect one.

Reading about Simon’s work made me wonder whether I was a satisficer myself. A recent purchase provided the answer, and it was a resounding no.

Several weeks ago, my wife and I bought two hanging plants for our porch. The problem was that they immediately began wilting in the afternoon heat. Every evening, I would water them, and within hours they would perk right back up. It became obvious pretty quickly that the plants were fine. The issue was that they needed more consistent watering than we were providing.

So, I decided to buy water bulbs. If you are unfamiliar with water bulbs, they are simple devices that slowly release water into the soil over time. You stick them into the plant, and they help keep the soil moist between waterings. This should have been a five-minute purchase.

Instead, I spent the next two hours scrolling through Amazon looking at what felt like every water bulb ever manufactured. I considered the glass versus plastic option. How large should the bulb be? Did I want to get clear bulbs or colored bulbs? Did I want a fast-draining bulb or a slow-draining bulb? What did the reviews say about each choice? Should I buy the six-bulb pack or just a pair of bulbs? What are my shipping and delivery options? What is the difference between the pair of bulbs that cost $26 and the pair that cost $12? In the end, I bought a pair of clear plastic $12 bulbs. I will never get those two hours of my life back.

Looking back, I allowed my perfectionism to interfere with what should have been a simple choice. I just needed something that would slowly water my plants. Almost any water bulb would have sufficed. Simon would likely have viewed my behavior as a classic example of maximizing rather than satisficing. In Simon’s framework, a maximizer seeks the best possible option and continues searching in hopes that a better one might be just one more click away. A satisficer, by contrast, stops searching once an option meets the relevant criteria.

Many lawyers are maximizers and perfectionists. Satisficing can feel like a dirty word in our profession. Lawyers tend to be intelligent, thorough, detail-oriented, risk-sensitive people. Those qualities are often strengths. Carefulness matters in legal work. Precision matters. Thoroughness matters. But there comes a point at which diligence turns into diminishing returns. As Voltaire famously observed, “Perfect is the enemy of the good.” And for the perfectionists reading this, I know that this is not a literal translation of the actual quote, “Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien.”

When we operate with the belief that there is always one more case to read, revision to make, or issue to research before something is ready, we risk impairing our ability to effectively represent our clients. The pursuit of the “best possible” result can become its own form of inefficiency.

Maximizing behaviors can also lead to cognitive overload, decision fatigue, procrastination, anxiety, and burnout. Every decision requires mental energy, and maximizers often spend far more of that energy than the decision itself warrants. Decisions become mentally exhausting because there is always the lingering possibility that a better choice or solution exists. In some cases, the desire to make the perfect decision can even delay action altogether. The result is a cycle of overthinking, second-guessing, and mental fatigue that can leave people feeling overwhelmed. For lawyers, who already operate under heavy workloads, that extra cognitive burden can become a significant contributor to stress and burnout.

The lesson is not that lawyers should cut corners or stop caring about quality. Simon was not advocating mediocrity. He recognized that every decision carries costs in time, energy, and attention. The challenge is knowing when additional effort is likely to improve the outcome and when it is simply feeding our desire for certainty or perfection.

So how do lawyers know when enough is enough? You should start with an awareness that you have a finite amount of time to complete tasks on all your client matters. With that thought in mind, there are then several guidelines that you can follow to avoid unhealthy maximizing behaviors.

The first thing that you should do is prioritize your work tasks. Not every task warrants the same level of scrutiny. One of the risks of maximizing is that it can cause us to treat routine tasks as if they were mission-critical. A lawyer who spends an hour perfecting a client email or researching a minor issue to death may have less time available for a dispositive motion, a critical witness interview, or a complex strategic decision. The goal is to allocate your effort in proportion to the importance of the task, reserving your highest levels of analysis and attention for the matters that will make the greatest difference to the client and the outcome.

Another helpful practice is to define success before you begin. Simon observed that effective decision-makers often establish criteria for what will constitute an acceptable outcome and then stop searching once those criteria have been met. Before starting a project, consider what a finished work product should look like. How many authorities do you need? What questions must be answered? What level of confidence is required? Establishing those criteria in advance can prevent the tendency to continually move the finish line as new information becomes available.

A third way to avoid unhealthy maximizing is to periodically stop and ask whether additional effort will make a meaningful difference. There is almost always another case to read, another witness to interview, another argument to refine, or another edit to make. The relevant question is not whether more work can be done. The relevant question is whether the additional work is likely to improve the outcome. If another hour of research is unlikely to change your recommendation, or another round of edits is unlikely to improve the clarity of the document, it may be time to stop.

Another suggestion for those prone to maximizing is to seek outside perspective. Perfectionists are often poor judges of when a project is finished because they continue to see flaws long after others view the work as complete. A trusted colleague, supervisor, or mentor can often provide a more objective assessment of whether additional effort is justified or whether the work product is already accomplishing its purpose.

Finally, remember that every decision carries an opportunity cost. Time spent pursuing marginal improvements on one task is time that cannot be spent serving another client, developing a new skill, spending time with family, or simply recovering from the demands of practice. The goal is not to lower standards. The goal is to recognize that perfection is rarely attainable and that the pursuit of it often comes at a price. So, you should routinely check in with yourself and ask whether the additional time you might spend on a matter will interfere with your ability to complete all your other responsibilities.

Assuming plants are sentient beings, I seriously doubt my hanging plants cared whether I purchased the optimal water bulbs. They were not looking for the best possible solution. They just wanted water. The experience was a useful reminder that our most limited resource is not information. It is time. Herbert Simon understood that decades ago. The challenge for lawyers is not to stop striving for excellence or to lower their standards. It is to recognize when excellence has been achieved and when the continued search for something better is simply consuming time, energy, and attention that could be devoted elsewhere. Sometimes the most effective decision is not finding the perfect answer. It is knowing when a good answer is good enough.