Splash No. 260 - On Optimization
On Optimization
I read an essay called “The Optimization Sinkhole” by culture writer Anne Helen Peterson and couldn’t help but feel like I was reading an account of my own life. These quotes from the article sum up the main points:
Remodeling is the attempt to find “the one best way” with our physical spaces; wellness culture is “the one best way” with our bodies; productivity culture is “the one best way” with our work lives. And like all quests for optimization, they’re sinkholes.
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Because remodeling is supposed to make your house feel more welcoming, just as wellness culture is supposed to make you feel more “grounded” in your body and productivity culture is supposed to feel more confident and in control at work. Instead, they just introduce you to areas of your life you didn’t even realize needed optimizing. But now that you’ve seen them through this lens, you can’t regain your old vision of yourself or any semblance of satisfaction. Again: a sinkhole.
Peterson identifies that there are all these realms in modern-day life that we try to optimize, making them into the ideal version of themselves. We can’t just have a functional coffee maker; it needs to be the best one. And we apply the same principles to every aspect of our lives. I’ve been guilty of this for as long as I can remember, going back to my middle school days trying different productivity techniques. When I was in school, grades served as an automatic way of seeing what good enough was, but after that, it’s been open-ended.
Lately, I’ve been tackling optimization sinkholes in different parts of my life as I try to figure out what exactly my personal style should look like, and as I try to get in better shape. These two aspects of my life have been the source of perpetual effort and thought over the years. For clothing, I’ve consumed endless amounts of articles about the history of fashion, watched tons of videos showing how to put together different outfits, and learned about different brands from designer to fast fashion. And for fitness, I’ve done the same on TikTok and reddit, Youtube and beyond. I’ve listened to so many podcasts about how to optimize my health and avoid as many bad outcomes as possible.
These sinkholes are inextricably tied together since they both involve improving my personal appearance or the way I’m viewed on a physical level. When it comes to how I come across intellectually or emotionally, I’ve never struggled as much with constantly wanting to optimize. However, I’ve been trying to change my appearance through clothes and fitness for as long as I can remember. I assume insecurity about appearances is basically universal considering the day and age we live in, but it only makes the problem harder. Economically speaking, this insecurity is great for the fashion and fitness industries, but it sure makes it a whole lot harder to feel satisfied.
There’s a version of engaging in fashion and fitness is purely healthy. One can serve as a means of self-expression or communication about oneself, while the other can be the basis of a healthy lifestyle. Unfortunately, due to the sheer amount of insecurity tied up in these worlds (for me and presumably many others), they feel like the perfect places for sinkholes to form and for people to attempt to spend their way out of them.
I wonder if the only way to avoid this is to do some internal work and start to accept myself fully as satisfactory. It sounds extremely difficult but does sound a lot better than continuing into these sinkholes. At the end of the day, we can suffer continuously or begin to accept things as they are.
Drops of the Week
ALBUM - NOT TiGHT by DOMi & JD BECK - really interesting album of instrumental jazz-ish tunes
POEM - "All that wanting, right?" by Devin Kelly - When I wanted unknowing, / I was given certainty, & when I wanted the hard / & fixed line, I was given mystery.
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Good enough,
Nikhil