Have we over-optimized our lives?
What exactly for?
Why is talking to friends for hours on end often perceived as a waste of time?
Have you ever wondered why we often find ourselves running from one place to another without stopping to question why?
Why do all recipe books teach us to cook “quick and easy recipes”? Why don’t people have time to cook anymore?
When did your vacation transform into a meticulously planned routine, devoid of the freedom to think, relax, and wander aimlessly?
Why is spending 1 hour at the gym something that takes up so much of our time but spending 1 hour looking at Instagram is not?
Why would you want to get in shape in 3 months and not simply build a lifestyle that allows you to stay that way for the rest of your life?
Why the fuck would you want your groceries delivered to your home within 10 minutes?
Why do wonderful techniques keep coming out with which to sleep less and have more time? For what exactly?
Why do we always order coffee to go? Why not take 10 minutes to sit down, drink it, and truly savor the experience?
Life is too amazing to put the 2x in every thing you do in your day.
Live it in 1x. Take your time to cook, to visit your family, to spend time with friends, to get in shape, to learn something new or to just relax and enjoy a movie. Take the time to just do nothing.
Perhaps we have gone too far in our pursuit of over-optimizing our lives. Constantly searching for the perfect new productivity system doesn’t actually make us better. The desire to squeeze every minute out of the day to accomplish more doesn’t necessarily make us better either. We were led to believe that more is always better, but that’s not necessarily true.
Write, read, draw, create, train, play, fail, do it again, fail again, read, paint, sleep, talk. Do it again and again in a beautiful loop. No matter how many hours you spend doing it. Because there is no metric for enjoyment, only enjoyment itself.
If you try to become a robot, you will most likely end up in a dark hole, frustrated for not getting everything done and feeling like a failure. I spent a long time trying to become one and failed miserably. We’re just not cut out for it.
The next time you want to optimize something in your life, ask yourself if it’s really worth it.
Because it’s not the things we do that matter, it’s the attention we put into them.
