Doing vs Optimising

At the Sydney Writers’ Festival a few years ago, a high school-aged boy asked Kazuo Ishiguro, “What advice do you have for a young person who wants to be a writer?”

Ishiguro responded, “Do you want to be a writer, or do you want to write?”

There are two modes of living: doing and optimising.

Optimisation is when you strive for the best of something, or the image of something, before the thing itself. Some people’s primary mode is optimisation. They want to be a writer or a physicist; the writing or physics is secondary. They desire primarily the fruits of the doing: awards, compensation, status. They do things to be like something or someone else.

Doing makes what you do about the experience or the thing itself. For some, the primary mode is doing. They want to do physics or write, and may or may not find themselves a physicist or a writer. They desire first the thing: the day-to-day, the act of the thing itself.

The doer/optimiser divide is a potent social pheromone—you can often sniff it out nearly immediately. Does this person want to be a thing, or do they want to do the thing? Do you want to be the CEO, or do you want to run the company? Do you want to be a founder, or build a company? Do you enjoy and know about the thing, or do you want to be known as someone who enjoys and knows about the thing?

Doing vs optimising is also integrity vs reputation, and correlated with low vs high neuroticism.

This divide manifests in subtle ways throughout our lives, often within the same person at different moments. A researcher might spend years pursuing a question out of pure intellectual fascination, then find themselves calculating which journal submission would most advance their career. An artist might lose themselves for hours in the pure act of creation, then later agonise over how to present their work to maximise its reception. The divide isn’t between people so much as it is between modes of engaging with the world—sometimes we’re swept up in the doing, sometimes we’re caught in the optimisation loop.

The psychology behind these modes often traces back to our deepest fears and desires. The optimiser’s mindset frequently springs from a fear of mediocrity, of being unremarkable in a world that increasingly demands exceptionalism. The doer’s mindset, in contrast, often comes from a place of genuine curiosity or joy. A student who optimises for grades might memorise facts to ace an exam; a student who wants to do the subject focuses on understanding, and might follow fascinating tangents that don’t even appear on the test. Both students learn, but the outcomes are different.

There is nothing inherently wrong with the optimising mode. It’s necessary for great success. A tall-poppy-snipping upbringing might leave a sheen of shame over it, but it shouldn’t have one.

However, it is prone to rot.

The optimising mode is rotten when it has no foundation. When you want to be known as an expert without putting in the work of expertise. When you want the title without the journey.

The optimising mode is rotten when it takes the wrong shortcuts. This is why, for example, the Forbes 30u30 tech list has such a harrowing history; it is the highest-profile fruit of a high-profile optimisation speedrun. As Pippin says, “Shortcuts lead to long delays”.

The optimising mode is rotten when it undermines commitment. I have known people to optimise their partners, to take a knife to their families in pursuit of status, speed, optimisation. I have known married people to speculate that they could have done better than their (excellent, loving, healthy) partner (and mother of their children). Applied this way, the mode again neglects substance.

Sometimes, curiously, optimisation can lead us into doing. A teenager might take up guitar to impress a crush, only to find themselves lost in practice long after the butterflies have faded. A student might choose a subject for its career prospects, then discover a genuine fascination with its puzzles and problems. In these cases, the desire to optimise (to be seen a certain way, to achieve a certain outcome) becomes an unexpected doorway into passion.

But more commonly, optimisation is healthy when it grows organically from doing. Consider the writer who spends years honing their craft before thinking about publication, or the researcher who builds a prestigious career on a foundation of genuine scientific curiosity. The key is sequence: doing first, optimising second.

The creative world offers vivid examples of this dynamic. Meryl Streep’s process is doing: “total immersion into possibility… infinitely interesting… there’s no bottom to it… a lot of it just great, deep, belief.” David Foster Wallace tried to write postmodern stories. They were shit. When he just wrote as he would, it was good. David Bowie spent the 60s trying to be other pop icons. Only when he decided to be himself did he become Bowie. Miles Davis quipped, “Let me play it first, and I’ll tell you what it is later.”

The modern world makes this balance particularly challenging. The individualism of modern/new Romanticism, combined with the hypercompetitive post-2008 world, furnished by dopamine-lottery social media, means that we are constantly honing and performing ourselves, our special-est selves, for everyone. Social media platforms amplify this by rewarding performance over substance—likes and shares flow to the optimised presentation rather than the messy, incremental reality of doing.

Different cultures approach this tension differently. Eastern philosophies often emphasise mastery through practice—the doing—while Western achievement society (Byung-Chul Han) can skew toward optimisation. Consider the Japanese concept of shokunin, the artisan who seeks mastery for its own sake, versus the Western delight in credentials and recognition.

So there are ways to maintain balance. We must notice when we are over-optimising. Are you more concerned with documenting an experience than having it? Are you thinking about how something will look rather than how it feels? The antidote is often simple: stretch, take a breath, and return to the doing. Open your notebook. Pick up your tools. Stop trying to be something and start doing something.

The goal isn’t to abandon optimisation entirely—it has its place. The goal is to ensure it grows from a foundation of doing, from substance rather than shortcuts. For now, I am letting the doing lead, and letting the optimisation follow naturally, if at all.