When I hear the words optimize or optimized, I usually think of these recent online cultural trends of optimization which have taken off in the past ten years or so. The pace of life under internet influence is frenetic and the interconnectivity creates a peer pressure feedback loop which seems (although in various ways depending on the person) to be making every person self-conscious. We are racing to make money (usually for other people, rich people who don't give about us), yet the average workers abilities are fading as reliance on AI technologies takes hold. In a society where the core values are shifting or vanishing on the grand scale, individuals are focusing their concerns on the smaller scale. Not "how can I make more money for the company that employs me?" but "how can I carry myself in a manner that makes me more valuable and capable at an individual level?" And so now this is how people optimize, by working out, by studying thing for fun. So if this movement is a consequence of the lame corpoarate buzzword optimize, then maybe that's a good thing.
