E4: Are You A Maximizer or a Satisficer?

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Episode Summary:

Listen to the full episode on iTunes (and please leave a rating to help the podcast reach more people): E4 – Are You A Maximizer or a Satisficer?

• Knowing yourself and understanding history are becoming increasingly important future skills.
• These things will enhance your pattern recognition.
• Maximizer: Perfectionist by nature.
• The biggest weakness of a maximizer or perfectionist: Procastrination and missing deadlines.
• Satisficer: Finish a project when it’s just good enough and never miss deadlines.
• The biggest weakness of a satisficer: Will miss details and cannot do very deep work.
• Research about procastrination as it relates to a maximizer: It’s not necessarily a bad thing. You will consider new alternatives and find more optimal solutions.
• Book example: Satisficer will just put out the book. Maximizer will miss the deadline by 1 year.
• Maximizer will often put all effort into 1 thing and specialize. I.e. olympic gold medalists and Nobel prize winners. True mastery.
• Downside of maximizing: if you don’t specialize in the right thing you miss a lot of good opportunities.
• Are these personality traits? On the one hand they’re personality traits.
• On the other hand, you can be a maximizer in some areas of life and a satisficer in other areas.
• Example: you can be a Maximizer in regards to your family but a Satisficer when picking a meal in a restaurant.
• Where are you on the spectrum in general?
• Whats your main tendency?
• Personality traits can change as you grow older.
• Mikael Syding: Changed from Maximizer to Satisficer. Perhaps because he became lazy after retiring?
• When you identify your type try to push into the opposite area to see how it feels.
• Take a walk and reflect on this. Best to do this with a friend.
• Silicon valley tech companies are moving into satisficing: Now they don’t make beta release anymore. They just put stuff out then refine based on client feedback.
• If you’re a Maximizer: Be careful about what you choose to do. Manage your Biological Prime Time (BPT) better.

We are right now creating the Future Skills Program which will be an online video course covering decision making, building the 4 Capitals, and other actionable tips for improving your life and career. It will include weekly homework and evaluations.

The course will be presented by Mikael Syding, the European Hedge Fund Manager of the Decade 2000-2009.

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