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.

How history got ruined?

History was my favorite subject in high school. I absolutely loved it. Humans have been doing cool shit for centuries.

And we’ve also done some terrible things that we just don’t talk about.

Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History was an eye opener. The Dollop also helped shattered the illusion. The opening of The Watchmen and having to google the Tulsa Massacre left me in disbelief for a few weeks.

I’ve gone through all sorts of emotions around this historical discovery process. I was super frustrated for a while, sad, angry, depressed, confused, and resentful.

When I accepted that most of what I know about history comes from stories that contains some range of truth, it helped me zoom out and take a broader perspective. Maybe Thanksgiving wasn’t such a heart warming gathering and President Lincoln wasn’t so perfect. In other news, Santa Claus might not be real.

The ruining of history has opened up something much more powerful. I’m still just as fascinated as ever with the stories of humans from all of recorded history, but now I treat them more as fiction than truth and I’m able to enjoy it again.

Where do I even begin?

When there’s a giant backlog of things grabbing for attention, it can be easy to get swept up in it. Overwhelm, distraction, procrastination, frustration all might creep in.

It’s important to figure out how you are best equipped to get into action. The answer is not the same for everyone, and it took me a while to realize that.

For some people, like myself, it’s best to spend some effort bringing structure. Put a plan in place. Prioritize. Organize. And then it becomes so much easier to execute.

Other people do best when they just jump right in. Action first. And when they get moving, it all falls into place for them.

And still other people, completely insane folks, they have to feel into it. They rely on their perception to guide the way. I joke about the craziness to this approach because it is so foreign to me, but I know some incredibly successful people who navigate the world this way.

As with almost all things, there’s nuance to it. There are different ways operate, and the key is to know what best serves you in these situations.

Who makes the decisions?

I trust my higher self.

There is a version of me who is connected to something bigger, who has access to more of the puzzle and who makes infinitely better choices.

I don’t trust any other version of me. I’ll listen to what those versions have to say and let them know that they are welcomed to contribute, but they don’t call the shots.

When my higher self makes an important decision or creates a new structure or habit, I will defend that to the end. If I’m feeling exhausted or sad or angry, I won’t allow myself to override what was decided from a higher energy state. If I leave my little boy in charge, every day will be an adventure and a spontaneous, chaotic mess. I’ll take note of what these versions bring it up at the next internal board meeting, but there’s a very clear hierarchy.

It’s higher self above all.

How does the world stay so fresh?

Every time I think I know something, the universe shows me that I actually know so little.

It feels like my entire adult life was one big discovery process of songs that I thought were originals and were covers all along. It’s disorienting and also super fun learning that All Along the Watchtower wasn’t an original Dave Matthews song, discovering the version from Jimi Hendrix and then later finding out it was from Bob Dylan.

I’ve listened to “To Pimp A Butterfly” by Kendrick Lamar many, many times. This morning, I “heard” one of the lyrics for the first time. It led me down a rabbit hole of discovery that blew my mind with how many things I previously missed and overlooked.

The world feels so fresh and young when we let it be. If we can, even just for a moment, forget everything we “know” and let curiosity do its thing, we can discover the magic everywhere in everything.