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To what extent do individuals use an optimal working memory encoding strategy? Previous work has suggested that individuals with higher working memory capacity are more likely to adopt a more optimal encoding strategy, such as encoding only a small subset of information (e.g., Cusack et al., 2009; Linke et al., 2011). These studies have mainly focused on examining how we prioritize the most relevant or valuable information. However, it is still not well understood how people select optimal strategies to boost memory performance when no explicit cues or strategic constraints are given. In visual search, studies using the adaptive choice visual search (ACVS) paradigm have found large yet stable individual differences in optimal search strategy when participants are free to search for either the optimal or the non-optimal target (Irons & Leber, 2016, 2018, 2020). Here we use a similar approach in a flicker change detection paradigm (Pailian et al., 2020; Pailian & Halberda, 2015) to investigate individual differences in optimal strategy in working memory. In the task, participants need to find one of the two changing items (a red bar and a blue bar) between two alternating displays. We are interested in how frequently participants select the optimal target, whose colour has fewer items in the display. Further, to assess the stability of individual strategies, we will examine the internal consistency and test-retest reliability of optimal target choice.