The Tyranny of Optimization

The Logic of More

Optimization begins with a reasonable premise: waste is bad, efficiency is good, improvement is desirable.

But this logic, when totalizing, permits no rest. Every inefficiency must be eliminated. Every moment must be productive. Every interaction must be optimized. The unproductive becomes intolerable. The unmeasured becomes invisible.

What began as a tool becomes a master. What began as improvement becomes compulsion.

What Gets Measured Gets Managed

The old management adage reveals the trap: what gets measured gets managed. But the corollary is equally true: what cannot be measured gets neglected.

• Relationships cannot be fully measured. They get neglected.
• Contemplation cannot be quantified. It gets squeezed out.
• Meaning cannot be optimized. It gets forgotten.
• Rest has no metric. It becomes guilt rather than renewal.
• Beauty has no ROI. It becomes a luxury rather than a necessity.

When optimization governs, only the measurable survives.

The Quantified Self as Surveillance

We have internalized the optimizer. We track our steps, our sleep, our calories, our focus time. We measure ourselves against ourselves, perpetually finding ourselves insufficient.

This is surveillance disguised as self-improvement. The panopticon has moved inside. We are our own guards, ensuring we never rest, never waste, never simply be.

The unoptimized life feels like failure. The unmeasured moment feels like waste. The human need for slack, for play, for purposeless time becomes a defect to be corrected.

The Inhuman Endpoint

Follow optimization to its logical conclusion and you arrive at the inhuman. The perfectly optimized life has no room for the inefficiencies that make us human:

• Daydreaming is wasted time.
• Long conversations that go nowhere are inefficient.
• Hobbies that produce nothing are unproductive.
• Sleep beyond the minimum is excess.
• Grief, joy, contemplation—all compete with productivity.

The fully optimized human is no longer human. They are a machine wearing skin.

Questions a Free Person Should Ask

• What am I optimizing, and why?
• What valuable things cannot be measured?
• When did rest become something requiring justification?
• Am I living my life or optimizing it?
• What would I do if no one were measuring?
• What inefficiencies am I grateful for?

What This Means for Ordinary People

Efficiency is a good servant and a terrible master. Use it for things that should be efficient. Refuse it for things that should not.

Protect inefficiency where inefficiency is human. Long dinners. Aimless walks. Conversations that go nowhere. Art that produces nothing. Rest that needs no justification.

Resist the internalized optimizer that tells you every moment must produce. Some moments are for being, not doing. Some activities are for their own sake, not for outcomes.

The fully human life is gloriously inefficient. That is not its failure. That is its character.

Frequently Asked Questions