By Olga Khazan

Over a decade ago, psychologist Barry Schwartz published what might be the ultimate psychological life-hacking tome, The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less.1Barry Schwartz： 巴里·施瓦茨，美國斯沃斯莫爾學(xué)院的社會心理學(xué)教授，2009年TED大會壓軸演講人，以博學(xué)和風(fēng)趣征服觀眾；lifehacking： 提高個人生活技巧的；tome： （有學(xué)術(shù)價值的）巨著；The Paradox of Choice： Why More Is Less： 《選擇的悖論》。In it, Schwartz argues that the modern world’s smorgasbord of options—Brawny or Bounty?Coke Zero or Diet? Major in sociology or anthropology?2smorgasbord： 大雜燴；Brawny： 和Bounty同為美國著名的紙巾品牌；Coke Zero： 零度可樂，低卡路里，主要針對男性消費(fèi)者；Diet Coke： 健怡可樂，不含糖，主要針對女性消費(fèi)者；anthropology： 人類學(xué)?！猰akes us less happy, not more. “Choice overload3overload： 超負(fù)荷。,” as he calls it, makes us question our decisions, set our expectations too high, and blame ourselves for our mistakes.

The book spawned the usual TED talks and counterintuitive Internet takes.4spawn： 引起；TED： 指technology，entertainment，design的縮寫，即技術(shù)、娛樂、設(shè)計(jì)，是美國的一家私有非營利機(jī)構(gòu)，該機(jī)構(gòu)以它組織的TED大會著稱，會議的宗旨是“用思想的力量來改變世界”；counterintuitive： 反直覺的，反直觀的；take： n. 某人對某事的態(tài)度、看法。More recently, Schwartz has been interviewed in a variety of publications and platforms about how his advice holds up5hold up： 維持，堅(jiān)持。10 years later.The rise of social media, he argues, has only heightened the agony6agony： 苦惱，痛苦。of decision-making through phenomena like FOMO (fear of missing out).

One of my favorite Schwartzisms is this: If you ever aren’t sure if you attended the very best party or bought the very best computer, just settle for7settle for： 滿足于?！癵ood enough.” People who do this are called “satis ficers,” and they’re consistently happier, he’s found, than are “maximizers8maximizer： 完美主義者。,” people who feel that they must choose the very best possible option. Maximizers earn more, Schwartz has found, but they’re also less satis fied with their jobs. In fact, they’re more likely to be clinically9clinically： 臨床地。depressed in general.

選擇越來越多，如同繽紛的大雜燴：大到所學(xué)專業(yè)，小到日常飲食，無一不需要我們做出選擇。有人總在追求完美，希望得到最好的；有人卻“得過且過”，知足常樂。面臨選擇，究竟哪種態(tài)度才能收獲更幸福的人生？哪種態(tài)度對身心健康更加有益呢？心理學(xué)大師將為你揭秘。

The reason this happens, as Schwartz explained in a paper with his Swarthmore10Swarthmore（college）： 斯沃斯莫爾學(xué)院，位于賓夕法尼亞州斯沃斯莫爾鎮(zhèn)，是美國著名文理學(xué)院之一。colleague Andrew Ward, is that as life circumstances improve, expectations rise. People begin comparing their experiences to peers who are doing better, or to past experiences they’ve personally had that were better:

As people have contact with items of high quality, they begin to suffer from “the curse of discernment11discernment： 辨別力，洞察力。.” The lower quality items that used to be perfectly acceptable are no longer good enough. The hedonic zero point keeps rising, and expectations and aspirations rise with it.12hedonic： 享樂的，快樂的；aspiration： 愿望。As a result, the rising quality of experience is met with rising expectations,and people are just running in place.13結(jié)果，生活體驗(yàn)質(zhì)量的提高，伴隨的是更高的期待，所以人們的生活狀態(tài)其實(shí)在原地踏步。run in place： 原地跑。As long as expectations keep pace with realizations,people may live better, but they won’t feel better about how they live.

Schwartz’ solution, as he recently explained to the psychology blogger Eric Barker, is just to settle for something that’s acceptable—even if you know there’s likely something better out there:

Whenever you need a new laptop, call up one of your maximizer friends and say,“What laptop did you buy?” And you buy that laptop. Is it going to be the perfect laptop for you? Probably not. Is it going to be a good enough laptop for you? Absolutely. It takes you five minutes to make a decision instead of five weeks and it’s a “good enough”decision.

In a Q&A session on Reddit last year, Schwartz said people can generalize this concept by arbitrarily limiting the number of choices they’ll consider14Reddit： 一個社交新聞?wù)军c(diǎn)，其口號為：提前于新聞發(fā)生，來自互聯(lián)網(wǎng)的聲音；arbitrarily： 任意地，武斷地?！?five colleges, not 25—and“decide that all you need is a good enough X, not the best X,” he said. “‘Good enough’ is almost always good enough.” It’s helpful information to keep in mind right after, say, the debut of a dizzying array of shiny, new iterations of a popular consumer tech product.15記住這點(diǎn)將會非常有用，比如在一系列令人眼花繚亂的大眾消費(fèi)科技產(chǎn)品更新?lián)Q代上市的時候。debut： 首次展出，初次推出（某種產(chǎn)品）；array：一大批，一系列；iteration： 迭代，反復(fù)。

It can be hard, in our culture, to force yourself to settle for “good enough.” But when it comes to happiness and satisfaction, “good enough” isn’t just good—it’s perfect.ELL