Self-optimisation turns a human life into a dashboard of targets, inputs, and results.
The self-optimising person does not merely want to grow. They monitor, compare, measure, and adjust themselves against an imagined better version. Sleep, mood, attention, fitness, productivity, appearance, and relationships become variables to manage. The promise is control, but the result can be permanent self-surveillance and the inability to experience an ordinary state as sufficient.
Self-optimisation is the psychological strategy of treating the self as a project for continuous performance improvement. It can use rational tools such as routines, feedback, training, and measurement. Its distinctive feature is the transfer of optimisation logic from a bounded task to the whole person. There is always another metric, intervention, habit, or baseline to improve.
The strategy is not identical to personal development, which is the broader cultural category of intentional growth. Nor is it identical to the self-improvement industrial complex, which is the commercial system that sells methods and products around that desire. Self-optimisation is the internal orientation that makes the system legible: the person learns to experience themselves as both worker and product, manager and performance data.
*Source: Rocke, Tabea, et al. “Dynamics of Self-Optimisation: An Introduction.” Historical Social Research, vol. 49, no. 3, 2024, https://www.ssoar.info/ssoar/bitstream/handle/document/96862/ssoar-hsr-2024-3-rocke_et_al-Dynamics_of_Self-Optimisation_An_Introduction.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y&lnkname=ssoar-hsr-2024-3-rocke_et_al-Dynamics_of_Self-Optimisation_An_Introduction.pdf. Peer-reviewed journal special issue introduction.