Stay on the Bus: or, Optimization is a Dirty Word

Optimal, Optimize, Optimization: Definitions and Parts of Speech

I want to start this post with three definitions from the Oxford Dictionary. They’re related, but I want to show you that they are very different in practice.

• Optimal: Best, most favourable, esp. under a particular set of circumstances.
• Optimize: To render optimal, to make as good as possible; to make the best or most effective use of.
• Optimization: The action or process of making the best of something; (also) the action or process of rendering optimal; the state or condition of being optimal.

I’m a writer and professor, so you’ll need to indulge me in this next part. Look at the part of speech each word occupies.

• Optimal is a noun. It simply is the favorable condition and it exists (as the definition indicates) in a specific context.
• Optimize is a verb. It is a process. Like all verbs and processes, in English at least, it is implied that it can take place and still fail to meet necessary conditions. We can write… and fail to meet our word count. We can give a speech… and fail to persuade our audience. And we can optimize… and fail to do anything, really, at all.
• Optimization is a nominalization. A nominalization occurs when we turn a verb into a noun. Notice that nominalizing “optimize” doesn’t just return us to “optimal,” the noun that the verb “optimize” ostensibly guides us toward. What this suggests, I want to argue, is that optimal and optimization, while similar at first glance, point to very different things and, often, are at odds.

The Problem with Nominalizations

Nominalization is well known among writers as, at least, a potentially problematic tendency. In technical writing, nominalizations are known to be, well, annoying and confusing. PlainLanguage.gov offers several examples, but here’s one:

• Nominalization: If you cannot make the payment of the $100 fee, you must make an application in writing before you file your tax return.
• Corrected: If you cannot pay the $100 fee, you must apply in writing before you file your tax return.

It’s clear when you look at the examples side by side. Keeping “pay” and “apply” as verbs simplifies things and ensures the sentence is clear and direct.

Okay, this first example may seem like a small deal to non-technical writers. (It’s not, by the way.) But there are other reasons to be skeptical of nominalizations. Henry Hitchings writes that while nominalizations aren’t bad by nature, they can certainly serve unethical purposes:

Nominalizations give priority to actions rather than to the people responsible for them. Sometimes this is apt, perhaps because we don’t know who is responsible or because responsibility isn’t relevant. But often they conceal power relationships and reduce our sense of what’s truly involved in a transaction. As such, they are an instrument of manipulation, in politics and in business. They emphasize products and results, rather than the processes by which products and results are achieved.

Hitchings is pointing out an insight familiar to rhetoricians: passive language conceals the subject and context of the action.

Optimal and Optimization: Contradictory Tendencies

Here is one last piece of context before getting to my main point. While thinking about this post, I grew curious about the use of optimal, optimize, and optimization over time. My curiosity led me to plug the terms into the Google Books Ngram Viewer, which tracks the frequency of search terms in printed sources published between 1500 and 2019 within a particular set of languages. What I found speaks (metaphorically) to the claim I want to present.

Note how, beginning around the Internet era, the use of “optimal” declined while “optimize” and “optimization” increased. There are plenty of possible explanations for this, the most obvious one being benign changes in language patterns. This is why I want to stress that I’m making a metaphorical association here, not a causal or a scientific one.

Still, though, the Ngram does speak to my larger point: the actual condition of being optimal doesn’t necessarily correlate to the action of optimizing nor to pursuing optimizations. In fact, these words highlight conflicting goals.

Optimization Eats Goals

When we pursue goals, we often take any optimization as an assumed good. That’s understandable to a degree. We all have limited time and resources to pursue our aims. But my experience is that a focus on optimization is nearly never helpful. Sometimes, the optimization state–the mindset where we focus on optimizing the process rather than pursuing the goal—clouds our ability to even get started. If you start thinking about this, examples from all areas of life are readily available:

• The optimization state: I need to figure out the optimal fitness plan before beginning to work out. The result: Not getting started.
• The optimization state: I need to draft the optimal outline or take the optimal notes before I can write a word on the page. The result: Not getting started.
• The optimization state: I need to research the optimal workflow for collecting research articles before I begin to read. The result: Not getting started.
• The optimization state: I need to decide on the optimal breathwork technique before beginning a mindfulness practice. The result: Not getting started.

But there are other ways that the pursuit of optimization can hinder our goals beyond just deferring our ability to get started. Often, pursuing optimization simply runs us in circles.

Optimization Means “Getting off the Bus”

In 4000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, Oliver Burkeman discusses the concept of “staying on the bus” as a metaphor for a subtle way we undercut ourselves in the pursuit of our goals. Here is the metaphor. You decide you want to go somewhere. This “somewhere” is your unique goal, what you want to accomplish. You decide to take a bus to your “somewhere.” Eventually, you begin questioning your choice: was this the right bus to take? Will this take me somewhere I want to go? Finally, you cave and get off at the next stop. You walk back to where you started and try taking another bus. Most likely, you then have the same worry and repeat the same process. You waste time over and over when, if you had simply stayed on the bus, you might have made it “somewhere.”

Burkeman uses this metaphor to point out that we often “get off the bus” when our creative work is unoriginal. Instead, he argues, we become original by “staying on the bus” until our unoriginal work transforms into something unique. But this metaphor applies to so many other endeavors. Just take the list above:

• I decide that the fitness plan I have been following isn’t moving me toward the results I want quickly enough. I see another plan I could follow, an optimization. I quit what I’m doing to start an entirely different plan at the beginning. I’ve gotten off the bus.
• I decide that there is an optimization I could apply to my notes or outlines that could be made after I read about another method online. I spend a month reformatting all my notes rather than writing/studying. I’ve gotten off the bus.
• A cool, new citation manager affords optimizations for collecting my research. I spend a month moving my library and, most likely, paying a new subscription fee rather than reading. I’ve gotten off the bus.
• I spend four years meditating by counting my breath but see an online figure cite mantra work as an optimization for practice. I restart my practice. I’ve gotten off the bus.

In each of these scenarios, I hope it’s becoming clear that worrying about optimization is… pretty non-optimal. It’s forcing us off the bus, to continue to restart our efforts and feel “productive” when, in actuality, optimization alone never gets us anywhere.

Getting to Optimal Means “Staying on the Bus”

To pull these threads together, the optimization state messes up the context of our activity in the same way as nominalizations more generally. While there are certainly times to reconsider fundamental assumptions and to alter our workflows, for many this can become a habit of distraction with the appearance of being productive. Rather than progressing toward the condition that “optimal” describes, we get caught in the feedback loop of the optimization state. We start to see optimization, itself, as the goal.

Hitchings pointed out above that nominalizations can be a tool of manipulation. Likewise, we manipulate ourselves when we obsessively look for “optimizations” for our workflows. This tendency too often stands in place of optimal. Stay on the bus.