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The Optimization Paradox
A Gamer's Guide To Life.
Attempting to optimize the first 80% of your life will make it much better.
Attempting to optimize the last 20% will make it miserable.
This plays out in people who call themselves perfectionists too. You’ll get much more done and produce much better work if you aim to do things 80% correct.
Take this example from James Clear’s Atomic Habits:
On the first day of class, Jerry Uelsmann, a professor at the University of Florida, divided his film “Beginning Photography” students into two groups.
Everyone on the left side of the classroom, he explained, would be in the “quantity” group. They would be graded solely on the amount of work they produced. On the final day of class, he would tally the number of photos submitted by each student. One hundred photos would rate an A, ninety photos a B, eighty photos a C, and so on.
Meanwhile, everyone on the right side of the room would be in the “quality” group. They would be graded only on the excellence of their work. They would only need to produce one photo during the semester, but to get an A, it had to be a nearly perfect image.
At the end of the term, he was surprised to find that all the best photos were produced by the quantity group. During the semester, these students were busy taking photos, experimenting with composition and lighting, testing out various methods in the darkroom, and learning from their mistakes. In the process of creating hundreds of photos, they honed their skills. Meanwhile, the quality group sat around speculating about perfection. In the end, they had little to show for their efforts other than unverified theories and one mediocre photo.
But, this isn’t about perfectionism. This is about the tradeoffs you make attempting to have a perfectly optimized life.
Self improvement content is becoming an exceedingly larger corner of the internet.
5am morning routines. Perfect macros. Cold plunges. 75 hard. Twitter threads on the 10 best books to read for 2024 or — and I can’t believe this isn’t parody — bringing a carry-on bag full of coconuts to the airport so you don’t have to drink bottled airport water.
All of it make sure you are squeezing every ounce of your potential out of life.
You don’t go for a walk to relax anymore, you go because Andrew Huberman told you that is was good to get morning sunlight in your eyes and that forward movement in nature improves creativity.
All these requirements sound exhausting.
These all sound like improvements. And they are, in a vacuum.
Unfortunately for us, life isn’t a vacuum.
Our tradeoff for extreme optimization is anxiety, guilt and choosing optimal decisions over the most fun or entertaining ones.
Let me give you an analogy from a game that I’ve played on and off for 15 years.
World of Warcraft.
The game is important because, like life, it offers a high degree of freedom. Players have near endless options to create and play their characters, but the game still has defined rules.
Because it has defined rules, unlike life, there is technically always an optimal way to play.
In gamer terms, this is called min-maxing. Like in real life, min-maxing usually leads to less fun and more rigidity.
You can’t take the spells that do cool things (follow your passion as a career)…
Or use the gear that looks the best (live in a unique spot)…
Or choose the stats that feel true to your character (rock climb instead of training the perfect gym split).
To optimize your character, you must pick the options that do the most damage or are the most useful in every situation (optimize 100% of your day).
Maximum optimization drains the fun from your game, and your life.
100% optimization also happens to be impossible given your inability to predict all the externalities in your life. Things will come up that knock you off course or interrupt your day.
When that happens the gap between your expectations and reality manifests as guilt and anxiety for the way your day “should” have gone.
Happiness = Reality - Expectations.
If you’re in doubt, have a kid. All your expectations for your own time go out the window and the happiness equation gets a lot simpler!
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