Looking for a job, a home, or life partner? How many should you look at before you settle? This is called the secretary problem. It is a fascinating problem because in today’s world we are faced with so many options, too many options.
It’s crazy to me is that there is an actual solution to the general problem and it is to look at 37% of the candidates without choosing any and then after select the one which has been better than any of the previous ones. Coincidentally, this only gives you a 37% chance of find the best candidate. This solution is only for the simple cases, once you add in the possibility of rejection, the ability to reevaluate choices, and the cost of search it may get quite complex.
And yet, even if you knew the best algorithm for your search, would you be willing to implement it. “Sorry, we need to break up, I have 13 more people to assess before I can commit to anything long-term.” Who can treat love with such precision?
As I have written, time is quite the valuable resource, so I tend to prefer expeditiousness. However, this path leaves many doors unopened. That could lead you to ponder what if. Yet, choosing to open more doors will also lead you to wonder what if you just stuck to a given route. So, there’s no solving that. When purchasing a home in Austin, we only visited one and purchased it. To me it was good enough, within budget, and checked the basic boxes. Were there better homes available? Certainly. But I didn’t want to put in months or years of searching to find it. To me time was important and I did not know whether market conditions would change. And they did. It also wasn’t a permanent decision as we realized that three stories is lots of stairs and have since moved to two stories.
You only have so many years on earth, so you sometimes the best decision is to realize that a good enough decision is what you need. At work people will often say perfect is the enemy of good. Similarly, if you are looking for the perfect home, spouse, you name it, you are going to spend years and probably be unsatisfied.
My advice is take the time to think of what you want. If you reframe the secretary problem to your terms then you are more likely to end up with a satisfying solution. For a job, maybe you don’t need to make more than all your friends, have a huge number of reports, and work on fascinating problems. Perhaps what you determine would be good is flexibility to visit your kid at lunch, the ability to sleep without worrying about work, while having enough to pay all your bills. The more constraints you add, the harder a solution is to find. So, consider your life and see if there are any adjustments you’d like to make so you can head to a more optimal place.