I’d like to state for the record that I was anti-optimization before optimizing was cool. My anti-max mindset began, of all places, at the gaming table where my friends and I used to gather every week to play Dungeons and Dragons (D&D). We still gather at that table on occasion, but expanding professional and family obligations mean we do it far less often now. Being a grown-up sucks sometimes.
For my non-geek friends who aren’t familiar with rolling 20s and slaying dragons on the regular, let me provide a simple explanation of the game to set the stage. And, yes, if you know me at all, right now you’re likely thinking, “Oh, Kathleen is going to provide a ‘simple’ explanation?” You may have even scoffed out loud, but I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear you.
A gaming group is like a book group in many ways. For instance, we meet at someone’s house and share a lot of tasty food, beverages, and gossip before we attend to the business at hand. Also like a book group, there is a plot involved. Think of a D&D campaign as a fantasy novel that you and your friends are acting out in real time. Like any good fantasy novel, an epic quest drives the action, and you and your friends are embarking on this quest together even though you have no idea where it might take you. Which, when you think about it, is how the best friendships work outside of gaming, too.
One friend serves as the narrator, who we old-schoolers still call the Dungeon Master (DM). The DM is responsible for telling the story and setting the scene, playing the parts we call “non-player characters,” as well as arbitrating the rules. There are literally VOLUMES of rules in D&D, so dungeon mastering is a huge responsibility. I’m grateful for my friends who love to do it, because it is way too much work for a responsibility-avoidant slacker like me.
Playing a character is much more my style. Part of the lure of D&D is you don’t play yourself. Like acting on stage, gaming provides an opportunity to be somebody else. Except you’re not inhabiting a role dreamed up by some alcoholic playwright but creating your own character from scratch. You get to decide what species you are (human? elf? dwarf?), your class (fighter? wizard? bard?), your backstory, your personality, even the direction your moral compass naturally points. I prefer a chaotic-good compass, which basically means you have a big heart and a tendency to do all the wrong things for all the right reasons.
Like all of us, D&D characters have a mix of strengths and weaknesses. These are called your “stats,” or, more formally, your ability scores. Character abilities are standard across species and classes, so no matter your backstory or personality, no matter which direction your moral compass points, your character will possess some level of Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity, Constitution, and Charisma.
The abilities are set, but your character’s mastery of these abilities is a big part of the character creation process. Level of mastery is generated randomly, literally by a roll of the dice. We roll four six-sided dice and keep the highest three numbers. We do this six times because there are six abilities. If our DM is feeling particularly generous, we may even roll seven times and throw out the lowest score altogether. In the end every player has six scores ranging from 3–18, and from there you assign those scores to the ability categories in a way that makes sense for your character. For instance, if you are a fighter you want to put your highest scores into Strength and Constitution, so you are strong and hard to kill, while wizards need Intelligence to learn and remember all those spells. In real life we can’t always choose what makes us shine, but in D&D we totally can.
High ability scores give you a boost in relevant situations, while low ability scores can complicate things. Just like life, right? If you are a fighter with a 17 or 18 Strength and must force open a door, you’ll have a better chance than your smart-but-wimpy wizard friend with a Strength of 9. This better chance is literal: you’ll get a bonus to your dice roll on all Strength checks. Conversely, low ability scores detract from your dice rolls. If you have a 6 Charisma and you ply someone for information, they’ll likely tell you to piss off and you’d better hope you have someone in your adventuring party with a big helping of the riz.
And this is where optimizing first rears its head.
[Don’t worry: it’s okay to admit you had forgotten this post was about optimizing. That was, like, eight long paragraphs ago. Even I had to go back and figure out where the hell I was going with this. If you stuck with me this long, thank you. I love you.]
Let it be said that I play D&D with some incredibly smart people. Not run-of-the-mill smart, but math smart. Two of them are actual math professors and all of them have played D&D since before the onset of puberty. This combination of mathematical prowess and experience, coupled with their vast libraries of D&D modules, manuals, handbooks, guides, compendiums, expansions, and map packs, means that these dudes have the know-how to create super-charged characters. And they do it, I swear, by working ten levels ahead of a player like me whose throughline for the whole of the campaign is simply “I’m an elf, I really like trees, and I miss my dead grandpa.” If you know me, you’ll realize this character arc isn’t too much of a stretch.
But my nature-loving, grieving elf adventures alongside a character created by someone I’ll call Ross (okay: it’s really Ross). Ross’ character will first appear as a run-of-the-mill, weak-ass, weaponless, robe-wearing magic user who for the first month of the campaign is perpetually hanging out in the back so she won’t get creamed. And then one day after lunch has been cleared and everyone is settling in to play, Ross will announce: “By the way, my character can fly now, turn invisible, and shoot flames out of her ass three times a day.” I always think of Ross’ characters when someone says, “When will I even use math?” Well, when you want to fly undetected while strategically shooting fire out of your ass, that’s when.
Ross’ character building is a solid example of optimizing, but I want to be clear that it’s an example I don’t have a problem with. It’s quite convenient to have a flying, invisible, fire-farting comrade when you are trying to rescue innocent villagers from mind flayers. I believe everyone should be able to optimize, I’ll 100% cheer them on in their optimization efforts, and I’ll happily enjoy the results of that optimization.
Just don’t make me do it.
Picture this. We are in the thick of battle, it’s my turn, and I’m hesitating. How does my sad, chaotic, tree-hugging elf approach this fight? Ross, sitting next to me, knows EXACTLY how this fight should be approached. He’s literally been doing the math AND doing the research for forty years. While I’m hemming and hawing, searching for my Stanislavskian motivation, Ross is immediately decisive. Which, in D&D, sounds something like, “You need to trade initiatives with Rob, then get ready to cast Dominate Beast on that wolf before moving back 20 feet so Brandon can cast his AOE without burning you alive.” Ross does always know the best thing to do, the most effective thing to do in almost any gaming situation. Because that’s how Ross is wired.
In Ross’ defense, years ago I lost my shit and told him how annoying it was to have him optimize my turns. Like, hey, it’s MY turn and it’s much less fun for me if you essentially play my turn. And he doesn’t do it anymore. Like, he never did it again, even though sometimes I look over at him and I can tell he’s clenching his fists under the table and all but biting his tongue off to keep quiet as I blunder around.
Because while Ross is wired like a mathematician, I’m wired like an actor. As in, “my character is going to ignore all the Important Things That Should Occur for the Sake of Victory and mosey on over and heal Sarah because in this campaign Sarah and I are from the same village and by god an elf who forgets where she’s from is no elf at all.” In short: there’s The Best Thing to Do and The Kathleen Thing to Do.
And (here’s where this is going, finally!) I’m not just talking about gaming.
Our culture is obsessed with optimization and I’m here to officially say I’m not on board. To the long list of things I don’t miss about social media you can add the endless content pressuring me to optimize my sleep, my protein, my looks, my relationships, my credit card points, my productivity at work, my gym time, even my leisure time, for god’s sake. To be honest, I’m a little repelled by hustle culture. The idea that anything less than maximum output is a waste of time? Fuck that.
For a while my husband Russell was following some guy on the socials who was determined to reverse the aging process. It’s probably more accurate to say that reels about this guy were following Russell on the socials. His name is Bryan Johnson, he’s filthy rich, and he now looks a lot like Data (Brent Spiner) from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Massive uncanny valley vibes. Johnson spends millions of dollars every year on his quest, gulps fistfuls of daily supplements, and meticulously times and measures every meal, workout, poop, and sleep session. Living forever is a 24/7 job for this guy. And, you know, more power to him. It’s his money and his life and he can 100% spend both any way he wants. But it makes me incredibly anxious to watch or read anything about him. I have no interest in living forever; it’s getting too hot and mean out there. But if I did, I sure wouldn’t want to spend all that extra time actively engaged in living forever.
Can you imagine experiencing every single aspect of your life as a problem to be solved with maximum efficiency? How exhausting. Honestly, I’m happy with the little victories, like when I remember to eat something before work or refill the water bowl on the porch for the neighborhood cats. These are objective wins for me; I’m not patting myself reassuringly on the back just because sometimes it’s enough to remember to eat. If I walk out of the house at 8:55am chewing on a piece of cold pie and there’s water in Big Fu’s bowl? I legitimately feel like I’ve already owned the day. Russell would say this is because my mom lavished me with too much praise as a child, but whatever.
I’m not saying that measurement and self-improvement don’t come in handy. Currently I’m using MyFitnessPal and a kitchen scale to try to lose a few pounds. I wear a Fitbit and it does make me feel good to hit 10K steps every day, though there are plenty of days when I don’t make it. I create and follow a detailed monthly budget and have done so religiously for decades because, hey, it turns out I do like nice things. I swallow a bit of melatonin to help me sleep, I like to moisturize, and I know enough about credit card points to score a few free hotel stays and flights each summer. Like, I’m not the Buddha, eschewing all of life’s metrics. But to me there is a difference between monitoring and maximizing. Maybe that difference boils down to spreadsheets, who knows.
Economist Herbert Simon, who won a Nobel Prize in 1978 for his work on decision theory and bounded rationality, has some interesting things to say about all of this. Simon is MUCH more complex to explain than Dungeons and Dragons, but if you are interested you can get some Simon-light in a 2015 Psychology Today article called “Satisficing vs. Maximizing.”[1] It’s online with no paywall. The author claims that although optimizers (called maximizers in the article) often do experience more positive life outcomes because of all the work they put into achieving perfection, they ultimately tend to be less satisfied. Isn’t that nuts? I suppose it’s because they are forever wondering: “But could I have done better?” By the author’s definition, people like me are not maximizers but satisficers.
Satisficers are individuals who are pleased to settle for a good enough option, not necessarily the very best outcome in all respects. A satisficer is less likely to experience regret, even if a better option presents itself after a decision has already been made. (Heshmat)
I feel this. I’m not particularly interested in a perfect life, because where is the fun in that? I appreciate all the textures and tussles. Hard-earned wisdom is, I swear, the sweetest of lessons. As are the lessons we learn and forget and must relearn in different contexts, sometimes over and over. I mean, if I never get burned by Brandon’s fireball, how will I ever learn to stay clear of fireballs? How will I learn how to balance doing the right thing and staying safe? Someday I want to be like Quint, Robert Shaw’s character in Jaws, rolling up my sleeves, showing off my scars, and telling stories about my wild adventures, broken bones, and broken hearts. Not unrolling a spreadsheet and boasting about all the protein I managed to eat before noon.
I’m including a link to Herbert Simon’s Nobel Prize speech if anyone wants to take a look at it[2]. I tried my best to get through it, but it’s incredibly dense stuff. I got about half a page in before deciding that the Psychology Today piece was absolutely good enough for me.
And, yeah, no regrets.
[1] Heshmat, Shahram. “Satisficing vs. Maximizing.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, 13 June 2015, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/science-choice/201506/satisficing-vs-maximizing
[2] Simon, Herbert A. “Rational Decision-Making in Business Organizations.” Nobel Memorial Lecture, Nobel Foundation, 8 Dec. 1978, https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2018/06/simon-lecture.pdf
