The word satisfice was coined by Herbert Simon in 1957. Simon says that people are only 'rational enough', and in fact relax their rationality when it is no longer required. This is called bounded rationality
The term satisficing has also been used in cybernetics to describe optimisation where all costs, including the cost of the optimisation calculations and the cost of getting information for use in those calculations, are considered.
As a result, the eventual choice is usually sub-optimal as regards the main goal of the optimisation, i.e. different from the optimum in the case that the costs of choosing are not taken into account.
Reference: Klaus Krippendorff's "A Dictionary of Cybernetics".
See also