What happens when the optimizer over-optimizes?

I looooooove the process of improvement. I was born with this desire to optimize everything. Optimize business, optimize sleep, optimize nutrition, optimize workouts, optimize relationships.

Everything. Must. Be. Better.

That’s a story that I bought into for a long time.

I would track everything I possibly could. I would monitor, tweak, iterate, scrutinize. If everything was running like a fully optimized machine at 100% capacity, maybe then I’d be happy and successful.

Turns out the key to happiness is not in trying to make something perfect. Perfection is a constant, never ending quest of disappointment. There’s no way to win that game. No matter how well its played it will never be good enough.

We are seeing this play out on a global level. If only we could be a little bit more profitable this quarter. Maybe this time we reduce the quality. Or cut corners. Or decrease headcount. We must improve the machine. At all costs. Or else.

I’ve found that after a certain point, it’s time to step off the hamster wheel of optimizing everything. What if I step off that wheel and I am happy, I am enough, and this life is beautiful… just as it is. What happens if we collectively step off of this optimizing wheel we’ve held as gospel, and we find that we have all that we need. Perhaps it is the endless seeking of optimization that is causing us to miss the abundance that has been here all along.