How do you make decisions?
Maximizer, satisficer, or something stranger.
Start the quiz →What this quiz explores
Some people search every option and then feel worse about the one they picked. Some people take the first thing that clears the bar and never look back. This quiz groups you by how much you search before deciding and on what you do afterward, which turn out to be separate problems.
How it works
The quiz has 4 possible results. Each answer option was written to lean toward one of them.
Your result is the one your answers pointed to most often. Skipped questions, and the occasional answer that does not lean toward any result, are not counted.
Alongside the result you see your answer profile: the share of your answers that pointed to each result. Close percentages mean you sit between two results, which is common.
Four deciders
Maximizer
You search until you're confident nothing better exists, and you end up less satisfied than people who looked at three options.
Spreadsheets for a purchase you'll make once. All the reviews, especially the negative ones. And afterward, a check on whether a better option existed, which is the part that does the damage. Your decisions are often objectively good. The research finding that matters here is counterintuitive: maximizers tend to get better outcomes on paper and feel worse about them, because knowing the full option set means knowing exactly what you gave up. The trap is that the search doesn't scale with stakes. You'll spend a week on a small purchase and the same anxiety on a large one, and the small ones are where the cost accumulates without any return. Regret is also a search cost paid after the fact, and it's the reason your satisfaction lags your outcomes. Sort decisions by whether they're worth optimizing, then apply different rules. For anything reversible or under a certain amount, set a rule in advance: three options, one hour, buy the one that clears the bar. Save the full treatment for the handful of decisions that are large and hard to undo. Then stop checking afterward; closing the comparison is what converts a good decision into a satisfying one.
Satisficer
You take the first thing that clears your bar and you don't look back, which is efficient and occasionally too cheap.
Three options, a clear standard, a decision, done. You rarely regret things, you don't revisit, and you spend almost none of your week deciding, which frees up a great deal of attention for whatever you're doing instead. On satisfaction rather than outcomes, this is the winning strategy, and most of the research supports it. The trap is that a bar set once tends not to get revisited. Satisficing works when the standard is right for the stakes, and the same reflex applied to a career move, a house, or a relationship can lead to accepting the first adequate option in a domain where the difference between adequate and good is enormous. Speed can also become avoidance, where deciding quickly is a way of not sitting with something uncomfortable. Keep the method and raise the bar for a short list of decisions. Name the three or four choices in your life where the option set is worth exploring properly, and give those a deliberate search you wouldn't normally do. Everywhere else, carry on. And check occasionally whether you decided fast because it was clear or because deliberating felt bad.
The Deferrer
You don't make bad decisions, you make very few, and circumstance ends up choosing for you.
The tabs stay open. The return sits in the hallway. There are decisions you've been carrying for more than a year that you could name right now. What's underneath is usually not laziness but cost: somewhere early on, being wrong was expensive, so not choosing became the safest available move, and it worked in the sense that you can't be blamed for an outcome you didn't pick. The trap is that deferral is a decision with worse odds. Waiting hands the outcome to whoever else is deciding, or to time, and the option set usually narrows while you wait rather than improving. The constant low-grade weight of unresolved things is also its own cost, and it's heavier than the discomfort of choosing badly once. Make the decision smaller rather than better. Pick one thing you've been carrying, set a deadline this week, and decide it even at the risk of being wrong, since the evidence you need is that a wrong decision is survivable. Use a coin for anything too close to call: if you feel relief or dismay at the result, that's your answer, and if you feel nothing, either option was fine. Then tell someone what you decided, so it's harder to reopen.
The Gut Caller
You decide fast, rarely revisit, and you're right often enough that you've stopped auditing the method.
Ten minutes for a purchase, a day for a job offer, and no backward glance. Deadlines suit you and open-ended decisions get resolved immediately. Fast intuition is real and well documented in domains where you've had lots of repetition and quick, clear feedback, and in those areas your instinct is probably better than a spreadsheet.
What this quiz can’t tell you
- It is a self-reflection exercise, not a validated psychometric test. It has not been normed against a population.
- It reports how you see yourself, which is not always how you behave. People who know you well might answer differently on your behalf.
- Results describe tendencies, not fixed traits. Most people recognise themselves in more than one result.
Read more about how our quizzes are created, including how scoring works and what we do and do not claim.