You’re making yourself suffer more by doing this

📜 The obsession with over-optimization

I’ve always tried maximizing time spent on the things I either enjoy or that bring me closer to my goals. Why? Well… I used to believe that avoiding wasting time was going to lead me towards a happier life.

But I found that instead of leading me towards my dream life, this thought process only caused me more frustration.

Over-optimizing everything got me the opposite result to what I wanted.

Avoiding suffering

Sure, none of us like wasting time. Especially when there’s something you look forward to.

So we start searching for the easiest way to get through the difficult stuff and get to the fun part as fast as possible. You do it, I do it, we all do it.

When I was younger I wanted to get home quickly to have more time to play games. Any errand that took longer than it needed to was incredibly frustrating. Wasting time on doing laundry was frustrating. And especially whenever I had to travel somewhere – that’s what was really frustrating. I could neither be productive or play games during the journey. A complete waste of time then, right?

Well, this whole approach is the real problem. And you might have already noticed the issue.

Obsession makes everything else harder to bear

“What? Going there twice? That’s a complete waste of time!”

I’m exaggerating something I’ve recently heard from my brother.

It’s about an errand we had to run together.

After I heard him say that, I noticed in his words an echo of how I used to think. But weirdly enough, I noticed I don’t really mind going there and back twice in one week. I’ll just take a cool book with me – most of the way is sitting in public transport anyway. And walking is pretty cool too; so what is there to avoid?

I shrugged my shoulders and said that sure, we can do it his way – doing it later in one go sounds fine – I don’t mind either way.

But a bit later I started wondering about it. What changed? How is my approach so different from what it used to be?

It just so happens that in the recent months I’ve been working on appreciating the present more; finding small but beautiful elements of the day, not letting obstacles get to me, and in general looking to be more satisfied with less.

The constant pressure I used to feel – trying to be the most effective at achieving my goals while avoiding “wasting time” on anything that didn’t contribute to it – was gone.

I noticed that being obsessed with my goals used to make everything else harder to bear. Getting too deep into optimizing your time, you reinforce the view that everything that doesn’t contribute to your goals is to be avoided. When you eventually have to spend time on mundane things that don’t bring you closer to what you want – it feels like every second is a waste of time.

The act of looking for a way to optimize yourself out of the activity can often cause you more frustration than the activity itself.

“Make it more efficient!”

I find it interesting how inefficient we actually are by trying to be efficient.

We overthink things using the excuse of “optimizing them” instead of simply getting them done. Sometimes it takes more time than just doing the thing inefficiently.

But also many of the things that are supposedly more efficient in the moment end up inefficient in the long run.

There are specific examples I have in mind.

Summaries, bullet points… asking AI for everything instead of doing the research yourself.

The “efficiency” in these things is very short-lived. You’re just getting used to the easy way out. Sure, you might get the current thing over with faster. But another obstacle is going to appear eventually. And then the next one and the next one…

You have to look at things in the long term. Building up the patience and tolerance for difficult tasks. Investing in compounding your knowledge – choosing depth that stays with you for many years instead of a quick summary you forget in a couple of months.

But let’s take a couple steps back and ask ourselves a more fundamental question.

What’s the point of all this optimization?

When trying to get through a task as quickly as possible you aren’t living and appreciating life. You’re thinking of a future projection of your life.

And what are you optimizing for in the end anyway?

Money? The least amount of effort? Pleasure?

I’ve heard a beautiful answer to this from – surprisingly enough – a business owner.

He said that he was aiming for: “being happy with time passing”. I really liked that response. It goes hand in hand with my focus on being present in the moment and appreciating everything about it.

It gets rid of surface-level optimizations for shallow goals and gets straight into the real goal.

And with that we get to what I would consider a healthier form of optimizing.

The optimization I support

Less is more.

The ultimate optimization is minimizing the things you need which helps you fully appreciate where you are now.

Don’t get trapped in the future. If you’re constantly chasing the next moment and trying to achieve your goal the fastest or to quickly skip through the boring parts of the day then you’re missing the only time you really have – the present.

Focus on the journey and your growth. I believe that by being conscientious and mindful in your current task, you can enjoy the process and allow incredible results to come on their own in the long term.

But also don’t try to do it because of the results – then it won’t work. Focus on making the process in your life something you can peacefully enjoy.