This Year, I’m Done Optimizing Everything to Death
Sometimes the "inefficient" path is actually the most effective.
I missed my yoga class last week. Not because of an emergency or a crucial deadline, but because I was trying to get one more email in before getting into the car. Then I tried to find the perfect parking spot, as close to the building door as possible, passing over a number of available spots which would cost me precious minutes of walking time. Until I couldn’t park my car and was stuck driving down a one way street that ended at a highway ramp. No way to turn around in time to make it to class.
Each small decision aimed at optimizing every minute that morning actually prevented me from doing something that I really wanted to do.
This moment became a mirror, reflecting back how much “maximum productivity” has subtly infiltrated every corner of my life. One of the contributors to this tendency is how digital my life has become.
Working online is great. No more commute, so you can get more done both at work and home. Seamless teleportation into meetings with colleagues and clients across the world and time zones means no more jet lag or enduring the increasingly spartan air travel experience. Without all the transitions that working in person requires, we can squeeze much more productivity out of the day. However, I've noticed that most of my days are filled with purely digital interactions, which leaves me feeling depleted. My body feels stiff, my eyes strain from starring, and my mood is depressed. Living by myself adds another challenge: I can end my last call with the US and go straight to the kitchen and have dinner. Living and working in the same place, mostly by myself, can be isolating, to say the least. While remote work offers big advantages for those of us who don’t need to go to an office, something vital, messy and human is missing when all our connections are 100% mediated through screens. In addition, in my experience, it also creates a distorted sense of time, where the more work I do online, the more I expect life’s activities to line themselves up neatly like back to back zoom calls that I can start and end instantly with a click of a button.
The Optimization Trap
Indeed, this tendency to make everything efficient, to squeeze every drop out of every minute, extends beyond work. I catch myself:
Planning the perfect route to combine errands
Squeezing in "just one more email" before transitions
Adopting a long list of practices which are supposed to improve my well-being or increase my creativity or output (at some point, I had 12 of them!)
While this might sound productive, I'm realizing how much these micro-optimizations cost in terms of mental health and genuine human connection. One thing I’ve noticed, for example, is how little patience people have these days to listen to each other. One of the biggest parts of my job is to listen, and I’ve been trained to do it, so it’s probably one of the reasons this part of my life has not suffered as much. But what it does is that it makes it easier for me to notice when listening is not happening. It is a common experience to see people’s eyes drift in conversations after a few seconds. The capacity and desire to listen to others is, in my view, at an all time low.
After talking with colleagues and peers, I've recognized this drive to optimize as the work of what some call the inner critic or superego – that part of ourselves constantly pushing for more, better, faster. While often well-intentioned (keeping us safe, successful, and connected), its influence can keep us from what we really want: peace, fulfillment, and belonging.
This year, I'm making two fundamental shifts:
More In-Person Connection
Prioritizing face-to-face collaboration when possible
Creating more space in my life for off screen interactions (eg calling instead of messaging, planning workouts or trips to the store in between calls, making an effort to socialize at least one school night/week)
Releasing the Optimization Addiction
Allowing for "inefficient" moments of connection that bump my schedule
Taking the longer route sometimes!!
Prioritizing focus over multitasking
That missed yoga class ended up reminding me of something important.
In trying to “do the right thing” and optimize every aspect of my life that day, I actually prevented myself from doing something truly nourishing, all in service of efficiency and maximization.
Sometimes the "inefficient" path is actually the most effective. Walking those extra steps from the further parking spot or stopping to have a chat with a neighbor on the street might be exactly what we need to bring our heart and body back online.
This is hardly a rant about abandoning productivity or returning to a pre-digital age. It's more about finding moderation, balance. About recognizing when my own drive for optimization might be costing more than it's worth. And how important it is to be in the physical world to have a fully human life.
What small moments of connection or well-being might you be sacrificing in the name of optimization? What would change if you loosened your grip on perfect efficiency, just a little?
Sometimes the most valuable things in life can't be optimized. They can only be experienced – one wonderfully inefficient and suboptimal moment at a time.
This! Loved this post so much I had to include it in Obsidian (IYKYK). So much wisdom captured in the closing lines! Also, "the increasingly spartan air travel experience." LOL! I'm so stealing that phrase.