The maximizer's curse

August 24, 2026

I am a decisive person. I am also a maximizer. These two facets of myself are often at odds.

Take this morning’s side quest: pool robots. I recently found out that our pressure-driven pool sweeper is dead—the pump itself is dead—meaning I can either shell out roughly $1,500 for a new pump and sweeper, or upgrade to a fancy new pool robot.

Reasonable time to upgrade: losing the booster pump cuts back on equipment noise, and newer robots can clean the sides, steps, and surface. The pool robot feels like a no-brainer.

BUT WHICH ONE?

After a morning of research, AI conversations, and comparison shopping, I had maximized my way into a hilarious amount of knowledge about the pool robot industry and all the pros, cons, and frustrations you might encounter, including:

  • Dealer-sold or direct-to-consumer
  • Corded vs. cordless
  • AI features or not
  • Surface cleaning or not
  • Economics of pool robotics vs. weekly paid cleaning
  • Will it clean steps and ledges
  • How often does it require charging (if cordless)
  • Can it run overnight
  • Safe for kids and pets (in the pool and on the pool decking)
  • Warranty and repairs

An embarrassing amount of distracting research later, I regret to inform you that my maximizer brain was still humming even after I picked and ordered one. There’s no standout company or clear winner in the corded vs. cordless debate.1 The market is mostly a big, fat middle of mediocre products sold by one big, annoying, shitty company, plus a wide swath of even shittier and borderline-dangerous models and a handful of high-end models that go a bit farther.

The fact that I’ve written as much about pool robots here—in a post that is very much not about pool robots at all—should tell you all you need to know.

One of my finest qualities is that I am a deeply curious person. This goes hand-in-hand with my maximizing, my potentially certifiable ADHD, and the fact that I can become informed enough to have strong opinions about almost any topic in roughly 4–6 hours.

AI compounds all of this. It can turbocharge my learning and send me down ever-deeper rabbit holes, giving those 4–6 hours both greater breadth and depth.

But this is not how I planned to spend my Monday morning.

Was it a waste? Not really. It will make our pool nicer, easier to take care of, and maybe even cheaper in the long run. Pool robots are a fun, weird thing to learn about. They’re an interesting application of robotics and AI. And there was time pressure: we’re in the heat of the summer, and I plan to keep using our pool daily for the next couple of months (thank you, Austin summer).

But it’s a slippery slope. When do you go deep, and when do you just fucking buy a thing and move on with your day? When should I be a maximizer, and when should I be a satisficer?

Maximizing is fun. To some extent, it’s indulgent. And my day is a little off the rails as a result.

But now I know a lot about pool robots.2

Footnotes

  1. For those who care, corded means no charging batteries, but it also means a cord to trip over around the pool—not great. ↩︎

  2. My pick: the Beatbot AquaSense 2 Ultra, a high-end cordless model. I went cordless because I was worried about cords on the pool deck with the dog + kids; Beatbot because I appreciate its direct-to-consumer approach over Maytronics’s dealer stratification and model chaos; and this model because it seems to strike the right balance between features, capability, and price without jumping the shark to the $4,000 model. ↩︎