Nathalie Buschor
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Self-optimization: why a good life cannot be optimized

September 1, 2026

Hopefully they still exist: things you don't have to optimize. Or better still: things you are not allowed to optimize.

Because it achieves nothing. Because they cannot be measured. Because there is – so far, hopefully never, or perhaps sadly almost – no technology for it. And above all because life is more complex than that. Fortunately.

That applies to couples just as much as to each of us on our own.

When life becomes a project

In Nathan Hill's novel Wellness, a couple tries to do everything right according to the latest scientific findings: relationship, sex, nutrition, health, parenting, psychology. Life becomes a project. And while the two keep working on improving themselves and their relationship, they optimize it – one may put it that way – almost to death.

For the sake of likes, too. Not even likes from people, but from an app. From a ranking algorithm fine-tuned by nerds and psychologists. That is how we live now.

With Marc-Uwe Kling's QualityLand, I laughed out loud at first. Precisely because the idea is so seductive: what if algorithms tailored to me knew my needs so well that they optimized my experiences along the way? What if almost everything in life could become a five-star experience with no deductions?

Who then actually knows me best – I myself, or the machine? Whom do I trust more?

And: what becomes of a life without surprises?

A real life does not consist only of the right decisions, the matching partners, optimal holidays and as little friction as possible. It consists of detours, coincidences, misunderstandings, wrong decisions and disappointments – and of encounters, places and lessons we would never have gone looking for. And that are valuable for exactly that reason.

When optimization becomes manipulation

With Dave Eggers' The Circle, the laughter sticks in your throat.

Because here it is no longer only about technology making our lives easier. The big tech corporations increasingly claim the authority to define what a good, right and socially acceptable life even is. And they rob us of the alternatives.

The Circle's slogans are: "Secrets are lies", "Sharing is caring", "Privacy is theft".

What is disturbing about it: people are not forced by simply having their freedom taken away. It is far more sophisticated to get them to give it up voluntarily. One human being against an army of trained, scientifically hardened psychologists and economists. The goal: profit and controllability.

Through likes and rankings. Through recommendations. Through the fear of missing out. Through constant feedback about what others think of us. And increasingly through algorithms that calculate from our past behaviour what we will want to see, buy, read, vote for – or perhaps even think – next.

None of this requires a dark conspiracy. A fairly simple human psyche is enough: we want to belong. We want recognition. We respond to reward. And we like it when someone confirms that we are right.

Manipulation works so well precisely because it never feels like manipulation. It is learned best in the most formative years of life: in childhood, as a teenager. It is like smoking – the earlier you start, the deeper it takes hold.

And then poison feels like comfort. Because: you might like this. I will take care of that for you. It is more convenient, isn't it? And it usually is.

But that is exactly the problem. How am I to find out what I want when I am constantly being shown what I might want and consume? How am I to change my mind when a system calculates ever more precisely, from my past, who I will probably be tomorrow as well?

The more perfect the personalization, the greater the danger that we get stuck in an optimized version of ourselves. Whether that version turns out to be a happy one?

Individuation – the sheltered space in which we may change

We call it individuation, becoming oneself, personal development.

This process is not an optimization programme. Or have you seen shops for it? Cool Instagram pictures?

It needs a safe, sheltered inner space in which not everything is immediately shared, rated and exploited. The nightmare of every algorithm: chaos. Doubt. Contradictions. Wrong turns. Encounters with the strange, the dark, the other. And sometimes the painful realization that something we were convinced of for decades – or were made to be convinced of – no longer fits.

It needs freedom, in every dimension. The freedom to dare to have our own thoughts – and to have learned how to think. To discard them again. To think differently than yesterday. And to be allowed to believe that our own thoughts may be spoken, sometimes must be spoken, without first being subjected to a dictatorship of likes. Or worse: without being sayable at all in an authoritarian system.

The labyrinth of life is simply not a logical sequence of instagrammable thoughts and moves.

Maybe I shout at my child. I cry over the hard teenage years. Over a difficult relationship. Over loneliness. Because right now I hate everything the way it is. Maybe I wanted a different life.

And still I have to get up the next morning and carry on. Without praise. Without likes. Without five stars.

Because that is life too. Hopefully never optimized away. How else would we grow?

"Man errs as long as he strives"

That is why I like this line from Goethe's Faust so much: "Es irrt der Mensch, solang er strebt" – man errs as long as he strives.

What a relief. Human beings are allowed to err. More than that: whoever really lives must be able to err.

Faust seeks knowledge, insight, love, intensity, happiness. He crosses lines, makes wrong decisions and causes terrible harm along the way. His story is certainly not a manual for a successful life. But it tells of something deeply human: there is no insight without the possibility of error. And no freedom either, by the way.

What no algorithm can optimize away

A machine can optimize. From millions of data points it can calculate which decision will most probably produce the best result. Our world is geared towards consumption – and so is the self-optimization industry. For almost every discomfort there is now a product: the new superboost fitness programme, the perfect nails, the boat, the property, the trip, the retreat, the next hack for an even better me.

Except: no fitness programme, no new nails, no boat and no property in this world will help us undo the moments that simply hurt.

  • The person who no longer loves us.
  • The child who drifts away from us.
  • The professional defeat.
  • Growing older.
  • The death of someone we love.
  • Or the realization: I actually wanted a different life.

Being human sometimes means searching and holding out – without a quick fix. And then somehow starting again. No algorithm can talk that away.

It only becomes problematic when we are supposed to learn to optimize these moments away as well, to avoid them, or to keep them from occurring at all in the five-star mode of our lives. Because then we lose more than suffering. We also lose the freedom to grow and to flourish through it.

Rilke found a wonderful image for this: "I live my life in widening circles."

We will not complete the last one. Because these circles keep growing until we die.

Hallelujah

A good life does not consist in having reached the optimal version of yourself. It consists in being allowed to keep thinking and searching – far from all algorithms. To err. To change your mind. To do something pointless. To take a detour. To love someone who does not fit the pattern. To fail. To begin again.

And to keep the freedom to be someone else tomorrow than the algorithm has calculated today.

Hallelujah.

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