A great example in my life is sailing. I love it, but it's definitely not the best way to travel around our local islands. It's slow, uncomfortable, and kinda difficult.
But, I'd take a sailboat over a motorboat most days. It's enjoyable to "trick" the wind to bring you where you want to go. You're continuing a tradition of boating that goes back around the dawn of civilization. But is it the fastest? Hell no.
Some would argue we don't actually need to do very many more things. There is no simple answer to "What is the human condition?" While we've discovered tendencies in our our natural psyche to design and build, we have many other needs that, I argue, should be balanced.
Just because we're plunked into existence on a planet, does that mean we must be compelled to ignore our desires for peaceful, sustainable existence and instead turn our energies toward empowering everyone to get more accomplished? This goes double when the things we do to help our brother or sister help those in charge 10 times as much. This desire for freedom from divine or overwhelming rule is part of how my country (US) was (ostensibly) formed. We didn't leave England/Europe to form a hyperefficient economy. We left it to escape the weight of an out-of-control social system. [0]
I would argue that in addition to our proclivity for solving puzzles and building, we're gifted an awareness giving us the ability to pick and negotiate which of our desires we will attend to. This awareness is often blunted by those who have a stake in suppressing it. But I argue that spreading and growing this awareness will result in our choosing the things to do most relevant to ourselves rather than our masters. This would include a curtailing of relentless optimization.
Usually at this point, one is challenged with arguments about ceasing tech development leading to an end of healing of suffering through e.g. medical research. However, we can demonstrate that the majority of human medical suffering is actually a result of our misguided abundance. The bulk of our diabetes and heart diseases cases owing to our poor diet, for example. Nor does it mean we must give up medical research entirely. In fact, with our priorities shifted (slowing the throttle on space exploration, for example), we would likely be in a better position to research rare and painful birth defects.
There comes a time to put one's foot down and say, "I will not participate in x/y/z because it doesn't benefit individuals sufficiently."
[0] Imagine facebook and other corporations taking the place of the medieval church, adjudicating marriages and property rights. Is it really that far-fetched?