When you’re faced with a choice, how much time do you spend making sure it’s perfectly optimal? If that decision is going to significantly affect your happiness, take your time. If you’re picking your tie in the morning, though, maybe don’t stress about it.


As personal finance site Money Boss points out, perfectionists like to maximize every decision they make. They’ll put off committing to any decision they don’t know will be the best use of their time, money, or resources. Sometimes this can be a good strategy. More often than not, though, it’s a waste of time that only makes you less satisfied with your life:

For a long, long time, I was a maximizer. When I had to make any sort of decision, I researched the hell out of it. I wanted to buy and do and have only the best. But you know what? No matter how much time I put into picking the perfect product, it always fell short of my expectations. That’s because there’s no such thing as a perfect product.


In many cases, your process of optimizing to make the perfect decision is really just a way to make you feel better about a good decision. There’s rarely such a thing as the perfect phone, or job, or relationship. You can eliminate a few bad decisions, but at the end of the day you’re still picking something that’s a little less than optimal. It’s okay to get comfortable accepting that reality so you don’t waste time on making the decision.

The Perfect is the Enemy of the Good | Money Boss via Rockstar Finance