The School of Greatness · 2026-05-25 · 69 min · 14,625 words

Too Many Options Are Ruining Your Best Work | David Epstein

Listen to the original audio · Transcribed with NVIDIA Parakeet · Timestamps stay in sync with the live audio

Our brains are not equipped to have access to everything everywhere all of the time. Since the introduction of infinite scrolling, people have gotten more bored. If you give people like 20 videos that they can scroll through, they'll be more bored than if you just take one of those 20, give it to them and make them focus on it. If you have tons of options, you'll do something you've seen before or that's easy or convenient, if that's blocked, that's the only time you can start being creative. He is an investigative journalist, a science writer, and a best-selling author of the book Range.

Which fundamentally changed how top athletes and entrepreneurs think about success, we have the inspiring David Epstein in the house. Satisficing is a word created by this guy Herbert Simon. Satisficing means instead of trying to evaluate every option and pick the best, you set clear criteria for good enough. When that's met, you take it and you stop. Just the idea

that there's something else potentially better. It spoils the feeling of the moment. It's called maximizing. It's almost always bad to be a maximizer. Less happy with their lives, less happy with their decisions, all these sorts of things.

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