Librarians by and large are very knowledgeable people.  Most librarians are drawn to the profession because of a love of learning.  Unfortunately, librarians sometimes struggle to share the value of the library with the general public.  We have a hard time figuring out why people don’t use our great databases or tap into our research skills.  Everyone should already know how good the library is – right?  Unfortunately, it may be that we librarians are suffering from the Curse of Knowledge.

To be clear, this curse has nothing to do with magic or ancient mystical tombs.  The Curse of Knowledge is a cognitive bias that occurs when individuals are unable to ignore the knowledge they have which others do not, or when they are unable to disregard information already processed.  This is the reason why an expert musician can make a lousy teacher of novices, because the expert forgets what it is like to know so little.

Chip and Dan Health discuss the Curse of Knowledge at length in their best selling book, Made to Stick.  In that book they analysis how to make ideas stick in the minds of listeners of any background.  Specifically, they identity ways to get around the curse by keeping  ideas simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional, and wrapped with stories.  I highly recommend Made to Stick as an antidote to the Curse of Knowledge.

Imagine you are shopping for new running shoes, but you feel tired after a long day. So you browse quickly through one store, narrow the search to a couple of pairs, make a quick decision to buy one and go.  Did you get the best deal?  Was it the optimum fit?  Probably not to both questions because you just engaged in satisficing.

Satisficing is a decision-making strategy that entails searching through the available alternatives until an acceptability threshold is met.  (Satisficing = Satisfy + Suffice)  Often this is a viable strategy since searching for the perfect product or solution would run into the law of diminishing returns where additional effort leads to fewer results.  So a natural tendency is to find the first good choice and stop there. While satisficing can be a good short term option, it may result in long term inefficiencies.  The quick purchase of running shoes now could produce regret over the colors and painful blisters a few days later.

I challenge you to be very careful about accepting satisficing in the workplace.  What seems like the easy way out can lead to long term productivity loss.  For example thinking “Do I really need to empty my inbox?  I checked the new messages and that’s good enough;” can quickly turn a clear head of “mind like water” into a foggy pool of “muddy water.”  If you want to succeed in the martial art of work, be prepared to put in the effort to improve every day and not accept the easy solution.  Satisfice with care when it comes to the things that matter in order to avoid later regret.