No Mercy / No Malice: Optimization

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
I'm pretty confident talking into a mic. Hey, I'm doing it right now.
But home projects, I second guess everything.
Is that noise normal? Is that water damage? And who should I even call? That's where thumbtack comes in. Upload a photo or voice note, and their AI-powered search helps diagnose the issue and match you with the right top-rated local pro. Instead of second guessing or searching for hours, you get clarity and can hire the right pro with confidence. For your next home project, try thumbtack. They know homes. Hire the right pro today.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:38)
When I got a new car, I thought my insurance premium would increase and empty my bank account, like if Fetween won the lottery.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:44)
I've invested most of my winnings in chicken tenders because they're bomb. But, bro, I bought a house and it's sick, bro. I'm thinking the floor is going to be all trampoline, bro, with the helipad on the roof. The contractor said it's structurally unsound, but they're just being babies.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:59)
But switching to Geico saved me hundreds, so my bank account is safe.

**George Hahn** (1:03)
It feels good to save some hard-earned cash.

**Scott Galloway** (1:05)
It feels good to Geico.

**SPEAKER_6** (1:08)
Support for this show comes from Odoo.
Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odoo, it's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one fully integrated platform that makes your work easier.
CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, and more. And the best part? Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you? Try Odoo for free at odoo.com. That's odoo.com.

**Scott Galloway** (1:50)
I'm Scott Galloway and this is No Mercy, No Malice. We're measuring everything. Sleep, calories, daily steps. At some point, optimizers fall prey to obsession, reducing life to a series of tasks and quantifiable outcomes while missing everything that matters.
Optimization, as read by George Hahn.

**George Hahn** (2:21)
What gets measured gets managed is often misattributed to Peter Drucker, the father of modern management theory. The full quote from business journalist Simon Kalkin is a warning, not a promise. What gets measured gets managed even when it's pointless to measure and manage it, and even if it harms the purpose of the organization to do so. In other words, our mania for measurement can obscure what matters most. Consider the popularity of health and fitness apps and the personal optimization trend those technologies enable. To a point, the more data we collect on ourselves, the better able we may be to improve our lives. But metrics aren't the arbiters of living well, nor is optimization life's end goal. I believe this trend isn't about optimizing life. It reflects a growing obsession that's consuming life's purpose and meaning.
The digital economy has created a winner-take-most ecosystem. Life America is exceptional for the top tier and increasingly anxious for everyone else. This K-shaped life offering awesome or anxiety fuels a maxing culture. How do we look? How much protein do we consume? How well do we sleep? How many books do we read, etc.? The optimization and gamification of life has created the hunger games we're all playing all the time. As journalist Nitsu Abebe wrote in The New York Times in October, the concept of maxing comes from 1940s academic game theory, but it's been repurposed by online communities to describe a strategy for relentless optimization where balance goes to die. The language that comes from this layer of the Internet has a mechanistic game-like aura as if life were mostly just a web of tactics and hacks and mutual manipulation.
According to clinical psychologist Katherine Houlihan, the optimization mindset has many of the hallmarks of perfectionism. Some commonalities, constantly pursuing high standards such that falling short of a goal is seen as failure, being preoccupied with results to the point of worry or rumination, constantly measuring performance to an obsessive degree, avoiding tasks if we fear we won't be perfect, slipping into binary thinking like your diet is either healthy, perfect, optimal, or unhealthy, imperfect, suboptimal.
We don't yet have much research about how adopting an optimization mindset might affect mental health and well-being, Houlihan wrote. But the negative effects of perfectionism are well-established. A 1923 meta-analysis of 121 studies found that when perfectionism takes the form of obsessive fear of failure, replaying mistakes, tying self-worth to performance, etc., it correlates meaningfully with anxiety, OCD, and depression in young people.
In economic terms, optimization means getting the greatest return on your investment. Investors, however, aren't perfectionists. They're pragmatists who operate with an understanding of the Pareto principle, which states that for many outcomes, roughly 80% of the results come from 20% of the effort. When applied to the personal investments we make in our own fitness, health and longevity, the lesson is that we make the biggest gains going from to 1, but there's a point, likely around 80%, where the efficiency frontier begins to collapse. If you don't exercise at all, getting moving four times a week will confer significant benefits. If you're a gym rat, however, working out every day versus four times a week yields diminishing returns.