Over-optimised

The web is full of ideas about how to optimise your life and your work.

It’ll try to convince you that you should optimise everything.
Everything has an app, hack or cheatsheet you ‘must’ try.

I’ve found there to be a much better way:

Step 1: Optimise your core things, through use.
Step 2: Do not optimise anything else.

Why does this work better?

By optimising through use, you’ll not just collecting productivity tricks.
That’s a fool’s game designed to distract you from producing meaningful work.

And by only optimising your core things, you’ll choosing to invest non-work, non-recreational time on refining things that actually matter.

Without this distinction, you’ll lose hours tweaking your email folders for a potential five-minute time saving, when you could have been practicing your craft to produce even better work, more confidently and more quickly.

Lean into what matters. Optimise what should be optimised. Leave everything else blissfully un-optimised.

Your work - and your schedule - will thank you.