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Legend has it that Archimedes’ greatest discovery — his “Eureka!” moment — happened while he was taking a bath.
That’s possibly more story than fact, but I bet you’ve had a similar experience. A solution to a difficult problem came as you were doing something autopilot like scrubbing your back, or driving home.
Several writers I respect say their best ideas don’t come when they’re staring at a Word document, but as they’re taking a walk.
Good things happen when your mind has space.
I’d like to extrapolate this. Should you persistently force your will upon the world, or lean back and let things develop organically? I think we all know the answer is a mix. Perhaps 70% driving things, with 30% space to let things naturally happen.
Reflecting on my own life, I’ve been focused on optimization since my 20s — pushing to get maximum value from everything. Has this actually brought success, or have I just been running in circles?
Don’t Over-Optimize Money
Morgan Housel once said 90% of personal finance is:
– Live below your means.
– Invest, diversified, with a 10+ year horizon.
– Expect and accept volatility.
That's 90% of finance.
90%.
Meanwhile, last week, I finally got $143 from a credit card I signed up for 6 months ago. It felt great.
I gorged myself on T&Cs for other signup offers. They’re valid as long as you haven’t cancelled (or signed up for) a card in the last 6 months. Time it right, and you can grab a bonus every 366 days from a bank. And there are so many banks!
I spent my late 20s trying to game things like this. It’s hard to move away from old mindsets even when they’re no longer useful. Of course, $143 is useful. But spending mental bandwidth on how to get a string of $143 offers at this stage of my life is not. Yes, money go up, but quality of life?
In Sahil Bloom’s excellent new book “The 5 Types of Wealth,” he shares how many of us lose sight of the most important things in life, because we’re overly focused on the scorecard of money. He writes:
“Your wealthy life may be enabled by money, but in the end, it will be defined by everything else”
Money is not the end goal. Money is just a tool to make our lives better.
Another interesting example comes from the vanguard of low-cost passive investing. A hero to so many, the late John Bogle created more than $1 trillion for investors via his philosophy.
Interestingly, his son is an active fund manager, whom John also invested money with.
Out of character for a Boglehead optimizing for best returns vs fees.
Perfectly reasonable for a father.
Don’t Over-Optimize Relationships
We know relationships aren’t transactions. Ideally, nobody is keeping score but everyone is giving. In reality, nobody wants to be in a relationship where they’re taken for granted.
How do you find balance? Here’s one definition of success I like:
“The perfect relationship is 60-40, with both trying to be the 60.”
The key here isn’t obsessing about specific percentages. It doesn’t matter if someone’s effort is 49% today or 59% tomorrow. The key is that if both sides attempt to give more than they get, the relationship — lovers, family, friends — will be better for all.
But the act of trying to quantify and optimize the relationship to be “fair” — or even worse: extract value — makes things negative.
Author-musician Ted Gioia writes:
“All the great things in life resist quantification. You can’t measure love. You can’t measure joy. You can’t measure hope. You can’t measure friendship.”
Growing up in the 90s, one of the trending relationship phrases was “quality time.” It can be misunderstood: “You mean if I hyper-focus during the one hour with my kid, I can spend the rest of my day playing poker and they’ll grow up fine?”
But modern research tells us that quantity time — doing normal life stuff together — is critical. Just like when you’re dating, how you spend non-quality time together foretells your future — when it’s more commitment, less romance.
What about too much time? Extreme, but a classic saying worth considering: “Love never dies of starvation, but often of indigestion.”
Helicopter parenting is unhealthy. So is love bombing.
Many years ago when I was single, I used to devour books/articles/forums about how to get better with women. Looking back, predictably laughable for an engineer. Trying to develop relationships via logic and process.
Of course, practical tips can help in many situations. Someone who’s clueless with women can learn how to dress up, build confidence, and make the first move.
But you can’t over-optimize it. At some point you have to show your authentic self and your partner will have to decide whether she can accept you — flaws and all — or not.
Love is an organic thing.
Don’t Over-Optimize Time
One of the greatest discoveries of all time came by mistake. Alexander Fleming accidentally discovered bacteria-killing penicillin — when he was actually trying to study the bacteria.
Thankfully, he had space to divert from his original plan and go down a side quest. One that saved more than 200 million lives.
Imagine if Fleming worked under a productivity-crazed manager. “Forget about the moldy dish with dead bacteria, Alex. Focus. On the living bacteria — we only have 30.96 man-hours before next month’s sprint review.”
Productivity frameworks promise us better control of our time. I’m sure you’ve tried some of them — GTD, Pomodoro, Eisenhower. They’re great, and ideally we use them to free up time for meaningful things.
Instead, most of us fill up the free time with more work.
Hopefully it’s useful work, but here’s the “Father of Modern Management” Peter F. Drucker with a reminder anyways:
“Nothing is less productive than to make more efficient what should not be done at all.”
Which reminds me about psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi‘s research on flow. I’ve looked at flow through a work lens for as long I’ve known it: “How do we use flow to make work more productive?”
But now that I think about it, flow isn’t actually about productivity. It’s not about getting the most things done in the shortest amount of time. You forget about time — you lose time — by being in flow.
It just happens that because you’re enjoying yourself so much, so locked in, productivity comes as a side effect.
No matter what you do every day, you lose 24 hours. Don’t just try to squeeze as much possible into those hours. Lose them well.
Back to my personal story. I started this blog 10 years ago because I wanted to optimize everything. Time, money, career, relationships. How would I get the most value out of everything?
I’m wiser now. More secure, both financially and otherwise. I know, it’s privilege. I can’t fault you if you’re hustling in your 20s.
But when you get to a more comfortable place, I want you to know it’s okay to slow down and take a breath. More importantly, it’s okay to do that today.
Don’t optimize everything. Have space. Space to wander and wonder. Space to reminisce and miss. Space to release and breathe.
Pic from Pexels: Ender Ergül
