Addicted to Optimization

“I’m addicted to optimization.”

I’ve been thinking about that comment for several years, since I heard my friend say it.

Missy was living in Nashville with her husband and, at the time, their kids. They’re both the conquer-the-world type: They both maintained high-octane careers and side gigs, served on boards, and loved to travel hard and fast. Missy held leadership positions in both nonprofit and for-profit spaces, including a strategic role with BCG.

“I’m addicted to optimization.”

We were catching up on a call when she rolled out this statement.

She wasn’t making a judgment on the rest of the world, but she and her husband had done some reflection, and this was the output.

Every moment could be filled with something productive.

Every effort could be improved.

Every opportunity should be evaluated.

Every experience could be helpful down the road.

Every learning should be passed on.

They wanted to get the most out of life. Not in a selfish way but an I-only-get-one-life-and-I-don’t-want-to-waste-it way. 

We all want that. But at what cost?

It’s been a few years, and I can’t get that phrase out of my head.

It’s stuck with me for two reasons:

1. It might be me.
2. It combines a word that is seemingly always bad (addicted) with a word that is virtually always good (optimization). They seem like they shouldn’t go together, so I find myself trying to connect them.
   • You’re probably not really addicted, right? It’s not actually that bad. It doesn’t have control over you.
   • You don’t really mean optimization is bad, right? You mean workaholism is bad, or hurting people in the path of progress is bad. Optimization is literally making things the best they can be. How can that be bad?

But the more I think about it, the more I think there’s something to it.

Think about what addiction is. F. Scott Fitzgerald said, “First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.” Addiction is being out of control. Being driven. And driven sure seems like a word used for people who are constantly optimizing.

I always go back to that distinction between being “driven” and “called” from Gordon MacDonald’s book Ordering Your Private World.

Addiction to optimization is a real thing, and it has real consequences.

The Cost of Constant Improvement

1. Burnout

My friend, Scott Sauls, said it this way: “Professional life can easily turn into a never-ending, self-imposed performance review.”

And it’s not just professional life.

When you’re addicted to optimization, everything in life becomes, at best, the infamous compliment sandwich from a performance review: two things you’re happy with sandwiched around the one thing you wish could be better:

• That conversation with your son.
• That brainstorming session with a client.
• That non-profit board meeting.
• That vacation itinerary.
• That pitch to a new customer.

You have no margin. You can never rest. You are always tense and tired.

Contrast that with what my buddy Jon Tyson describes in The Burden Is Light: Liberating Your Life From the Tyranny of Performance and Success.

Addiction to optimization shows up as the inability to stop, rest, and celebrate an 80% success when needed. To trust that someone else will pick up the slack. Or that they won’t, and that it’s OK.

It’s hard, but the inability to stop is a guarantee of a crash. And as every humanoid robot knows, stopping is pretty important.

2. Hasty/bad decisions

Quick decisions can be great. In his book, Blink, Malcolm Gladwell outlined the concept of thin slicing, saying, “Decisions made very quickly can be every bit as good as decisions made cautiously and deliberately.”

He also writes, “Our unconscious is a powerful force. But it’s fallible.”

When we’re addicted to optimization, we can overly trust our instincts, and that’s basically what it means to be an addict—you trust yourself too much.

So, you think you can handle it all and make decisions accordingly.

• “My board’s not in the details, so I just need to decide. No need to call them.”
• “I know they’re not my direct report, but I should overrule their supervisor because I know culture best.”
• “Taking this extra meeting won’t put too big a burden on my family. I know they’ll be fine.”
• “I need to trust my gut on how much risk to take here.”

In each of these examples and countless others, you might be right. But make them often and quickly enough, you’ll start getting them wrong.  The inertia of self-trust is just too powerful. And the cost, professionally and personally, is too powerful.

3. Short-circuiting growth

Not only can quick decisions be wrong decisions, but constant pivots short-circuit the growth and formation you need.

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett did an interview a few months back with Ben Sasse in which she talked about the challenge of having a full career and a full family and the reality of obstacles and complexities in life. In other words, the lack of optimization.

And, quoting Marcus Aurelius, she said, “The obstacle in the path is the path.”

When we’re addicted to optimization, we are learning and improving everything as fast as we can. We’re trying to overcome the obstacle. To microwave everything.

But personal growth can’t be microwaved.

Sometimes, the very obstacle I’m trying to overcome—the very imperfection I’m trying to optimize—is the very thing that offers me the greatest possibility of growth, be it learning endurance, growing in empathy for others, deepening my trust in God, embracing my lack of control, or building my work ethic.

God is infinite, and I am finite. I am built to have limits. And when I am addicted to optimization, I’m tempted toward the lie that I can be all-knowing and infinite.

And it’s true for the organization as well. The obstacles teach us about collaboration internally and externally, shape our culture, invite creativity—all things we need. But we have to learn to live with the obstacles when we can’t just defeat them.

Conclusion

“I’m addicted to optimization.”

When I use this with clients, it shocks their system as if I were waking them up with a bucket of cold water.

Let me be clear: I’m not against habit stacking or multitasking, striving for excellence, or even hyperproductivity. Efficiency is a core aspect of stewardship, and that is one of the guiding principles of my life. Maybe you’d say the same thing.

But that’s not too far away from addiction, so be careful.

For now, do what I did: Think about it.

3 questions:

• What’s the appeal of optimization?
• Which of the three consequences do you see most present in your current life?
• Would you say you’re addicted to optimization?