Good decision makers often wind up with the best things available. But how do they do they do it? Finding the best thing involves searching, but it also involves knowing when to stop searching. How good a searcher are you? Do you search too much, or just the right amount?

Psychologists and economists have extensively studied problems of "sequential search" and “optimal stopping”. Fancy terms for a basic idea. Consider this simple game (which you can play online):

You have been captured by an evil dictator. He forces you to play a game. He brings you into a room with many brightly colored gift boxes. Each box has a different amount of money in it. You can open any number of boxes in any order. After opening each box, you can decide to open another box or you can stop. If you say “stop” after opening the box with the most money in it (of all the boxes) you get to live and keep the money. However, if you stop at any other time, you lose and the evil dictator will kill you.