The downside of trying to over-optimise your life

Optimising means making your life as perfect, as effective, as functional as possible. Generally, it’s about making the most out of life. And let’s be clear: there’s nothing wrong with optimising your life. In fact, there are plenty of good reasons to do it.

But over-optimising? That often does more harm than good. It's like chasing a "perfect" way to do something. And unfortunately, perfect doesn’t exist.

Let me share a few real-life stories of me over-optimising and stories I encountered that could tell quite a lot about the drawback of over optimisation.

Story 1: Writing this article

When I typed the first few letters of this article, I thought: “Let’s look up online what others are saying first. Let’s put on some music to get in the mood. Light a candle — romanticise this task a bit.”

Next thing I knew, I had gone down a rabbit hole of researching how to write better, ironically, for an article about over-optimising.

Everything I did felt productive. But it was just delaying the one thing I actually needed to do, which is writing.

Remember when you told yourself you'd just look for some inspiration before starting something... and ended up scrolling social media for an hour?

Or when you planned your whole week down to the hour with colour-coded tasks and a beautiful layout on your planner. And then you ended up spending more time planning than actually doing?

Yep! That’s over-optimisation. It distracts us from the main tasks. 

Finding: Over-optimising is a distraction, not an enabler.

Lesson learned: The most enabling thing that I’ve constantly reminded myself whenever there’s something to conquer: “Just do it!” (definitely not advocating for Nike here, they just happened to pick one of the best taglines ever.)

And then once you begin, you will figure out better ways to do something and adapt to what suits you best.

Story 2: Working in social media

As someone whose study, main job, and personal projects have relied heavily on social media ever since 2021, I’ve come across so many content management and scheduling tools (CoSchedule, Later, Hootsuite, SproutSocial… just to name a few).

They all come with advanced features, even AI assistants nowadays, promising to “conveniently schedule content and manage different platforms with ease.”

But to this day, I still use Meta Business Suite. It’s simple, and everything works just fine. I spend most of the time creating content, not worrying about whether I need a better scheduling tool. 

We live in a world of “Top 10 tools for everything.” But the real question is: are we actually going to use them, or even just the very first one we encounter? If you do, let me tell you about a very natural instinct: the fear of missing out on the benefits of other tools available.

We think we need the best ergonomic chair, the perfect gym setup, or the most accurate sleep tracker. Then we delve into a journey of trialing, researching, and documenting the pros and cons of each. 

And the search for “the best,” “the optimal,” goes on and on. Just so we make sure to maximise the available resources around us.

Finding: Over-optimising can make you feel like you’re never enough.

Lesson learned: Maybe being a minimalist is an advantage when everyone is telling you to optimise. Maybe it’s time to take “Less is more” seriously

Story 3: Getting rid of grocery shopping

Long story short, author Ozan Varol switched to grocery delivery services to save himself time, so he could do more work, be more productive and more successful. 

And then he realised that by shifting to an “optimised” life with automation, subscriptions, delivery services, and online shopping, he was missing out on the joyful moments and the connections with other human beings.

For me, contemplating this story, I feel like it also reduces the humanness in our everyday lives. 

Think about writing an appreciation letter to someone you love, holding a shopping cart and hand-picking the food that nourishes your body, watering the plants in your garden, walking the dog… These mundane activities keep us grounded, help us destress, and take our minds away from all the pressure. 

They remind us that at the end of the day, as long as we manage to pay for the roof over our head and the food on the table, everything will be fine.

I once read a LinkedIn post with the headline saying, “You are leaving money on the table,” talking about how we are wasting our time on tasks that don’t bring us monetary value. But is it true that monetary and extrinsic values are all we’re after in life? I don’t think so, and you probably don’t, either.

Finding: Over-optimisation not only reduces our connection to others, but also to life in general.

Lesson learned: That is not to say we shouldn’t strive for more, or be ambitious, or go get our goals and build the lives that we want. But just don’t forget, it’s not worth sacrificing the human activities in our everyday lives, just to be more “productive.”

Story 4: My “perfect” holidays

In 2024, I went on two holidays.

One in Tasmania, Australia. My friends and I spent weeks planning the agenda for it: what we would do each day, where we would eat, which tour to which tourist destination we would go on, etc. We made sure not to waste a single minute, just to make the most of the trip. 

The other was to Perth, Australia. We didn’t really plan for it, we just rocked up at the airport, and the next thing we knew, we were there. What to do next remained a mystery.

Guess my favourite trip!

If it was the trip to Tasmania, there’s nothing to say here, is there? 

So yeah, you guessed it right. In Perth, we really just did whatever we wanted, whenever we felt comfortable, no forced schedule, no running breathlessly to stay on plan.

One day, we decided to go to Rottnest Island, where we could meet the cute quokkas. And because it was unplanned, we spent two hours in the hotel room trying to figure out how to get there. 

I must admit, it wasn’t the best use of our time. But we had fun and got the much-needed rest. We saw the quokkas after all, so it ended up being one of the happiest days of 2024 for me.

When you throw your plan and your expectations out the window, doesn’t life unravel in such unexpectedly beautiful ways? (I guess it could go the other way too, if we don’t have any plan at all.)

Finding: Over-optimisation takes away our chance of enjoying life and all the beautiful things that come with it.

Lesson learned: Always striving for a “perfect” state or always following the plan is just a bit… boring. Life is for you to experience, both the nice things and the hard things. You’ll learn something from the hardship, and you gain joy and great memories from all the pleasant surprises.

Story 5: Changing my approach to work

My very first manager loves Notion. It's a great tool to manage tasks and priorities. And I got used to it, and loved using it as much as she did.

We had a proper process in place. She would give me the brief on a Notion ticket, with all the details like “Project Owner,” status such as “Requested,” “In Progress,” “Ready for review,” “Completed,” and deadline… 

All the information and updates were documented in the Notion tickets. It was also our main communication channel for everything project-related. And everything worked smoothly.

Then she went on maternity leave, and I had a new manager who preferred giving instructions and feedback via Slack instead, and mainly managed tasks through Google Calendar.

I was super stressed at first. I had to receive briefs and feedback sometimes verbally, sometimes via messages, with unclear deadlines unless she specified. To me, everything felt out of place without Notion.

In retrospect: “Notion was indeed a great management tool, but did I rely too much on it to the point I couldn’t seem to adapt to a new way of working?”

I learned to shift my approach to task management. Instead of being passive, receiving everything in Notion to start, I became more proactive in asking follow-up questions whenever things were unclear, documenting things on my own.

It was a good learning experience, overall. I grew professionally by taking a more active role in my day-to-day work, and personally by training my mindset to be more adaptive and flexible.

Finding: Over-optimisation reduces your adaptability and makes you rely on it to function.

Lesson learned: Optimisation is a choice to be better. So treat all the tools, all the pre-conditions, all the systems you have as a “nice-to-have,” not a “must-have” in order for you to work efficiently. That way, when circumstances change and unexpected things happen, you won’t “dysfunction.”

Final thought

There are definitely solutions to help us get away from the trap of “over-optimisation.” 

What to do in one sentence: 

Let go of the need to optimise everything, and instead embrace the presence and the imperfection of everyday life.

I hope you find joy, peace, and meaning in life exactly as it is. No need for the “best,” the “optimal,” the “most productive” tools, or systems, or whatever is claiming to make your life better (well, maybe some of it would be good, but keep it in moderation).