Optimization

Each of us has stuff we enjoy and stuff that doesn't matter to us. If you don't care about cars, you get the most economical A to B car. If you aren't into gardening, you focus on getting hardy, native, decorative plants, bushes and trees and mostly ignore them. Some of the things I've worked on optimizing are things that don't bring me joy, meaning, or enhance my sense of identity, so these areas of my life reflect minimalism and utilitarianism.

I really enjoy cooking/baking for other people but not for myself. I don't care about my appearance too much, so toiletries and clothes are something I want to put the least effort into while still meeting social expectatons and professional standards. So optimization in these areas looks very similar to minimalism.

But I really enjoy being helpful and useful, so I carry a ton of things most people don't, like a first aid kit, battery bank (I lend this out as much as I use it myself), multitool, that kind of thing. I also like emergency preparedness, so I carry a bunch of extra stuff related to that - e.g. in my backpack I carry a small solar panel, a tiny folding woodstove, a 1L pot/water bottle, a water filter, an extra change of clothes, etc.

This is still highly optimized! I spent many months researching and planning, not just for each individual item, but strategizing how the items were going to work together, and figuring out which items would actually be the most helpful in the real world, and which were commonly recommended but mostly served unnecessary functions or had unnecessary features.

The result is I have a backpack that has all my day-to-day electronics, snacks, lunch, thermos, etc., plus everything I'd need to suddenly spend a month in a hotel (eg if my house burned down while I was at work or I couldn't get home for some reason), or I could add just a few items from my car (just a tent, sleeping bag, sleeping pad and food) and go backpacking/camping with it, as I already have everything else I'd need in my backpack at all times.

Despite having all that capability, the bag weighs just 15lbs, which is totally comfortable for me to carry around day-to-day. So optimized? Yes! But minimalist? No!

So optimization doens't mean minimalism, and it doesn't mean doing without things you find enjoyable or meaningful. If you love fashion or makeup or cooking or painting etc., I'm not suggesting you ditch all that stuff and only have what you absolutely need to survive.

Optimization itself happens to be an interest of mine. It's my "art", my "self expression". It's a part of who I am.

Further, as I've worked on self-improvement, I find I need less and less external "stuff" that helps define me. As I do the work, I discover that a lot of what I thought made me "me", including many qualities I thought were good and that I was proud of, were actually a result of past trauma. The process of healing has made of a lot of who I thought I was and what I thought made me happy fade away. Not changing, just dissapearing.

The best analogy I've thought of so far is imagining that who you are is like a patchwork quilt, with each square representing something about yourself - your love of renaisance art, your weird laugh, your ethnicity, nationality, morals, favourite ice cream flavour, your relationship with your family, etc. A lot of people look at the unhealthy patches, like anxiety or a negative self-image or whatever, and try to change that patch to something positive. What I've found through my work is that a lot of the patches are just being cut out without being replaced by anything. I feel "less" than who I used to be. Not in a bad way, that would just be another negative patch.

Where I used to care about some stuff, there's just equanimity. Things I used to feel defined who I was are just no longer there, but not replaced with anything. This has made me feel like the most accurate self-expression is "nothingness" in a lot of areas.

Obviously you can't have no clothing style, no hair style, etc. Plain white clothes is just as much of a style as punk rock. "Bald" is just as much of a style as a mohawk. The solution, I found, is that optimization is as close as one can get to "nothing". I'm not choosing a hair or beard style, just doing what's easiest. I'm going with the clothes that are the most stereotypical and expected. My look is "non-threatening generic white guy". The "ideal meal" is lazy, cheap, and yet nutritionally complete. But it doesn't add to that dopamine hit you get from "yummier" foods. I find the more self-work I do, the less I feel like I need dopamine hits from external stimulus in general.

This has actually made me feel like practices like Buddhism are kinda backwards. They try to force the results the progress will naturally lead to. Like trying to hold good posture without doing the fundamental work of stretching and strengthing that would naturally give you good posture without trying. When your body is strong and balanced, good posture feels natural and effortless. When you do the work of dealing with past traumas and focusing on personal growth, you come to a place where living more like spiritual people stereotypically do - less belongings, simpler life, less seeking pleasure or distraction, etc. - feels completely natural and effortless. So that's also part of what is motivating me to optimize - it feels peaceful, relaxed, effortless.