As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, this concept is something that has been swirling around in my head since I spoke with my brother. Since buying his house a couple of years ago, he's basically gutted the whole thing and renovating and extending it. He's doing it all himself of course.
I've never considered him to be minimalist in any way, but as we chatted he was saying how he's going all in on maximalism. I asked him what he meant by that, and he gave me the example of always struggling to find a pencil in his house when he's trying to mark something or write something down. Instead of having one pencil that he uses, he went and bought 30 pencils. Now, pencils just perfuse his operating spaces such that there's always one close to hand.
To him, minimalism was the refinement of objects and processes down to their most optimised form or process. To him, minimalism and optimisation were synonymous.
I found this an interesting perspective, because for me minimalism often goes much further than that. Too far. Minimalism can all too often be the reduction of a product or process to the point that it loses most of its utility. The most reduced version possible without losing its meaning entirely. Minimalist objects have a reputation for basically being useless for the thing they're designed to do.
You only need to take one look at the EDC (everyday carry) market to see how many minimalist EDC objects are nearly useless for their intended purpose. There is a delightful level of irony here; minimalist objects that barely do the thing they're supposed to, to the point they are more ornamentation than utility. Ornamentation is largely the opposite of minimalism. That is, maximalism.
To my brother I argued that buying 30 pencils to leave lying around the house wasn't necessarily maximalism, but rather a different form of optimisation. Instead of buying a pencil to improve his pencilling lifestyle through some specific pencil performance metric, he improved his pencilling experience by simply improving his access to them.
Of course, minimalism should really be as my brother believed it to be; the most optimised version of a thing. Any more minimalist or maximalist and it would be at the expense of whichever performance metric you consider most important. Something out of the Colin Chapman handbook; simplify and add lightness.
This is where my thoughts about optimalism began.
Optimalism, which I know is not a word, is the act of shaping the things you do and buy in order to optimise for a higher or abstracted objective (definition is a WIP, obvs). In essence, happiness.
The point, after all, of this existence is to be happy and stress-free. That means optimising our surrounds to ultimately reach that objective. This is also, at least theoretically, the ultimate objective for both minimalism and maximalism; improving our lifestyles and wellbeing by removing clutter or adding clutter, depending on which camp you belong to.
Back to my brother's pencil example; while a better pencil (or one with extra features) could have in some small way improved his renovation experience, more pencils was the optimal choice. Completely eliminating the added (albeit small) stress of having to find a pencil when he needed one.
This goes against most of our current economic machine. Instead of harder, better, faster, stronger, it's about the right amount of each that gets you the furthest towards your (our?) ultimate goal.
Need an axe? The best axe for you almost certainly won't be an axe with a bottle opener, and probably not the most expensive one either. Nor will it be the cheapest axe you can buy that shatters its handle after the first use. It might not even be buying an axe at all but borrowing one instead. It will almost certainly be axe shaped, and do axe things. The optimal axe is the one that ultimately makes your life objectively better.
Notice I said objectively better, not whatever you tell yourself to justify buying whatever is new and shiny. Unfortunately it's no longer easy to just buy the axe most optimised for your use and budget and use it as intended for the rest of your mortal life. Every product category is now packed to the gills with extra features intended to entice you to buy their product, regardless of if these features actually add material benefit. It's why new cars are more iPod than car, and we now have an outdoor cooler with a built-in air conditioner for some reason.
It's hard to believe that, in the case of the cooler, it's both an optimal cooler and an optimal air conditioner. In fact, it's a minimalist cooler in the truest sense; taking two products and mashing them into a single product that's not good at either of the things it's supposed to do. To make things worse, a large problem with these multifunction devices is that if one function fails, the whole device becomes useless or next to useless. Who's going to carry around a dead air conditioner, just because you can put some ice and drinks in it?
Optimalism would be buying a cooler that coolers the best within your budget (and does whatever else you need it to do to improve your QoL), and accepting that you're outside.
One of the things that 3D printers have really enabled is the democratisation of the production of bespoke objects to suit individual people's specific needs. These aren't just objects that are low volume or niche, but rather very specifically tailored for the very specific need of a single person. You can't mass produce for this kind of thing, and in fact a whole cottage industry has popped up to service this market. There are people out their that'll whip up the thing you need for a nominal fee.
Having a problem and solving for it, not buying a solution and then looking for the problem.
Optimising for happiness.
