542. If you’ve ever obsessed over your sleep score, treated self-help like homework, or tried to “maximize” a vacation, you know how easily optimization becomes its own exhausting job. Culture tells us to upgrade everything—habits, productivity, even our emotions—but at a certain point, trying to be our “best self” backfires. This week, instead of automatically optimizing your life, here are five questions to help you step back, recalibrate, and remember what actually matters.
542. If you’ve ever obsessed over your sleep score, treated self-help like homework, or tried to “maximize” a vacation, you know how easily optimization becomes its own exhausting job. Culture tells us to upgrade everything—habits, productivity, even our emotions—but at a certain point, trying to be our “best self” backfires. This week, instead of automatically optimizing your life, here are five questions to help you step back, recalibrate, and remember what actually matters.
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Welcome back to Savvy Psychologist. I'm your interim host, Dr. Ellen Hendriksen. As you know, the wonderful Dr. Monica Johnson recently concluded her time as host of the show. While the Quick and Dirty Tips team searches for a new permanent host, I'm delighted to be back at the mic alternating with Dr. Jade Wu for the next few weeks. Every week, we'll help you face life's challenges with evidence-based approaches, a sympathetic ear, and zero judgment.
For all of us who have ever obsessed over our step count, turned a hobby into a side quest, or tried to “perfect” our morning routine, optimization is both a hopeful promise and a permanent struggle.
Optimization culture takes a toll. There’s immense cultural pressure to “be our best self.” And it can be hard to know how to push back.
Because what does it even mean to stop optimizing? Do we lower our standards and see if anyone cares? Stop tracking personal metrics and go on vibes? Lean into ephemeral qualities that can’t be quantified? If you feel like the point of living has become lost in perfection, today we’ll take a step back.
This week, rather than mindlessly working to upgrade and transform, here are four questions to ask ourselves to help resist the urge to optimize everything.
Question 1: “Is this meant to be optimized?”
Sometimes we try to optimize things that aren’t meant to be optimized. A client we’ll call Katy was worried she wouldn’t be able to “be in the moment” on her long-awaited vacation. She wanted to maximize feeling carefree, happy, and relaxed.
But optimization implies control, and some things can’t be fully controlled, like our emotions, creative inspiration, level of focus, whether people like us, other people’s behavior, or, to Katy’s dismay, exactly how she’d feel while exploring a Caribbean island.
Plus, even when something can be optimized, sometimes that misses the point. We can optimize our vacation schedule for maximum bucket list activities, but we end up exhausted and like we’ve somehow misjudged.
So, be judicious. Ask yourself: Can I actually control what I’m trying to optimize? Or am I trying to shoehorn it?
If the answer is “shoehorn,” remember: the opposite of control isn’t chaos; it’s trust. Control what you can—you don’t have to cross your fingers and throw everything to the wind—but after you’ve controlled what you can, trust yourself to handle whatever happens next.
Katy knew herself well enough to predict that even if she optimized her vacation schedule, she would inevitably stumble across a restaurant or activity that was “better” than whatever she’d booked, and then feel FOMO, stress, and regret—the opposite of carefree, happy, and relaxed.
But she also remembered she had ways to cope—pivot to the other activity, focus on what she had planned, or simply wait out any second-guessing. Rather than exhaust herself trying to optimize her emotions, she chose to trust herself to manage them in the moment.
Question 2: “Is my optimization on autopilot?”
For a lot of us, optimization is an automatic habit. Why wouldn’t we default to the best? Why wouldn’t we be as efficient and effective as we can be? If I’m going to select home insulation, do an abs workout, or save for retirement, why would I not make that as optimal as possible?
But if optimization is our default setting, that also means we might be mindlessly expending our precious time, energy, money, and attention on things we don’t actually find meaningful or important (Protein intake, anyone? Skincare, anyone else?)
This requires a look at our habits versus our values. If you love tracking your protein or taking care of your skin, knock yourself out! It’s important and within your values because you love it.
But if you find yourself choking down Greek yogurt when you’d rather have a bowl of cereal, or experiencing sticker shock while you hit “Buy Now” on the retinol you read about in Wirecutter, question whether whatever you’re optimizing is truly important, meaningful, or fun for you.
Question 3: “What optimization am I willing to trade for what I truly value?”
We can choose not to optimize in service of something else.
For example, a few months ago I joined a new gym. Personally, my overly conscientious brain is wired to focus on doing things correctly, so it would be really easy for me to optimize my workout by focusing intently on having the right form and intense effort every time I go. In fact, this would be the “correct” thing to do. I “should” optimize my workout—why else am I at the gym, after all?
However, I go to the same class three times a week, and therefore see the same people regularly. It’s a ready-made community if I choose to join in and engage with everyone.
So even if I “should” optimize my workout, I “choose” community instead because that’s what I value more. My natural wiring pulls me to perfect my kettlebell technique, but I’d rather hang out and chat with the people in class. Everything’s a tradeoff, and I choose not to optimize fitness so I can lean into community.
Question 4: “Am I optimizing or procrastinating?”
For a lot of us, optimizing our work through a final polish is just procrastination wearing a glasses-and-mustache disguise. Procrastination isn’t time management; it’s emotion management, so it makes sense we would rather fine-tune a task that makes us feel competent than break ground on one that makes us feel stupid.
However, it turns out not all types of procrastination are created equal. Traditional procrastination replaces our task, like working on an assignment, with an unrelated behavior like doomscrolling. But productive procrastination replaces our task with an adaptive—though less important—behavior like organizing our notes or cleaning our desk.
Now, we all need a little emotion management sometimes, and if you optimize your way to an empty email inbox or a perfectly clean desk once in a while, give yourself some grace, especially given a study published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology.
The study looked at around 1100 college undergrads and found that students who engaged in productive procrastination had more adaptive outcomes—from a better GPA to a lower risk of alcohol problems—compared to those who procrastinated non-productively. Turns out procrastination isn’t all bad.
That said, if you find your procrastination is consistently disguised as optimization, go back to Question #1 and remember: the opposite of control is trust. Trust that you are capable enough to figure out the next step of a confusing task, trust that you can handle challenging things, and trust that you can ask for help and advice if you get stuck.
Let’s tie it all together. The giant take home? Optimize what you choose to optimize, not what think you should. The question isn’t, “Do I optimize or not?” It’s more like, “What do I find important, meaningful, or fun enough to spend my precious time, energy, money, or attention to optimize?”
How do you push back against optimization culture? Share it over on my Substack, which is called “How to Be Good to Yourself When You’re Hard on Yourself,” or email me at ellen@ellenhendriksen.com.
The Savvy Psychologist is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast. It's audio engineered by Steve Riekeberg. The Director of Podcasts is Holly Hutchings. Our Podcast and Advertising Operations Specialist is Morgan Christiansen, Rebekah Sebastian is our Marketing Manger, and Nathaniel Hoopes is our Marketing contractor. Follow Savvy Psychologist on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Next week, Savvy Psychologist Dr. Jade Wu returns with some savvy advice about sleep. I’ll see you in two weeks!