Why You Should Be Careful Of Optimization
Pareto had it right; a few things make the biggest impacts.
Hello friends, welcome! If you want to explore how we see the world & better understand it, subscribe below:
You can check out my other articles or follow me on Twitter too!
I’m driving up the I-880N in the East Bay Area and in the right lane, ahead of me, a precariously loaded construction truck is bouncing up & down w/ each bump in the road. If this truck collided with me, it probably wouldn’t end well for me.
The steel truck driver puts on his left blinkers & begins merging into my lane.
Three tons of steel and plastic, going 70 miles per hour down an asphalt road, is moving 10 feet to its left, while navigating among other multi-ton vehicles doing the same a mere few feet away.
And how’s this being done?
Thru his lefthand-side mirror, I see his eyes dart as they look at me and the road ahead of him.
A shiny piece of glass.
That’s all that’s keeping two multi-ton vehicles from colliding and creating a mess across the multi-lane asphalt freeway.
In a nation of 332,000,000, of which 232,800,000 can legally drive, it’s miraculous that only 12,150,000 or roughly 5.2% of drivers each year are involved in crashes.1 Now 12,150,000 is 12,150,000 too many, but it’s much smaller than I expected.2
In an age of 3D printing, birds of steel3 , and large language models that help me know what a 1099-B form is on my taxes, we rely on shiny pieces of glass to guide us in making these kind of life or death decisions.
Of course, mirrors alone don’t get us to a world where people can step into a car or cross a street and be sure that a drunk driver or someone not paying attention won’t harm them, but it does contribute to getting us 95% of the way there.
For all of our innovation, it’s the simple things or approaches that contribute the majority of the value.4
When we reject these notions, we can become detached from what is truly moving the needle and fall into over-optimization.
These leaps of over-optimization seep into all areas of life; even the breakfast table.
One day, I decide to start including egg whites in my morning breakfast. Low cholesterol, low calorie, high protein? Pshh, say less.
After my first bite of my freshly made egg whites, I quickly realize that they belong here in the taste category.
Seriously, plain egg whites are tasteless. Been thru multiple hot sauce bottle trying to improve this state. I have failed.
I can do better than this. Hell, I need to do better than this.
I quickly realize that if I add onions to the stove & throw on some salt & pepper, I immediately elevate to A Decent Taste. I call that a good breakfast.5
But then I notice that the onion slices I usually cut are too big. This leads to a) a slow cook time and b) not enough caramelization.
So I decide to cut a whole onion into medium-sized pieces, store it in a container for easy access and we get to Mm, ain’t too bad!
Then, a bit later I notice something similar. While it cooks faster & with more flavor, the pieces are still misshapen, so they don’t caramelize evenly and still cook a bit too slowly.
And cutting them up even smaller would take too much time.
Enter the onion shredder.
With its swivel blade, winding contraption and EZ-hand pull, I can place large chunks of onions in close it up and with a couple of pulls, out comes perfectly diced onions! Wala!
This is it. I have reached peak egg white culture.
Day 1 of Diced Onions: Look at how fast they cook! Look at the evenness of the browning! Isn’t it just beautiful? I take a bite from the pan. Mm, I swear, the eggs have never tasted better.
Day 2 of Diced Onions: Why doesn’t everyone use this approach? I could add tomatoes, green bell peppers, mushrooms; the combinations are endless!
Day 3 of Diced Onions: Chef Kiran?! When did I become so fancy?😏 Ah, this is the good life.
…
Day 14 of Diced Onions: I take out the container and slap a pile of diced onions onto the stove. How convenient! I continue making breakfast thinking about a newsletter post I read that morning.
…
Day 21 of Diced Onions: I take out the container and slap a pile of diced onions onto the stove. What should I do after work today? Write? Gym?
…
Day 96 of Diced Onions: Damn it, my onion shredder is still in the sink; I’ve got to wash it sometime. I’ll do it next time; lemme scarf down these eggs and head out.
…
Day ??? of Diced Onions: Why am I shredding onions with a onion shredder? Each time I shred onions, I have to clean the gadget and store it someplace and the egg whites don’t taste too different. So I put the onion shredder into the cabinet where it gathers dust, never to see the light of day again.
And that’s the trap of over-optimization.
It’s fiddling with the last bit of enjoyment/benefit/optimization that we think we should squeeze out of something, when what really matters in the long run is a few simple things.
The most optimal processes are the ones that a) you consistently use and b) get you most of the way there.
If you aspire to be a gym rat, organizing your life so you can show up to the gym each day, fully present, is going to matter far more than what brand of sweatpants you’ve got on.
You can buy all the gym gear you want with a fancy gym bottle & pre-workout and decide between PPL, HIIT, 5×5 or pilates, but if you never go to the gym it really doesn’t matter.
If you’re looking to fix your sleep schedule, setting a hard stop to your day, saying no to friends who wanna go out and setting up alerts so you can go to sleep on-time will do wonders for you.
All the Oura rings, Apple iWatch health data and 8Sleep systems, while useful, cannot replace going to sleep at the same time each night and getting 7-8 hours of rest.
With writing, you can get all the exquisite stationery, the ergonomic setup, a new Substack or Beehiiv w/ a well thought-out name but unless you block time in your calendar to write and then sit down to write, it’s all for naught.
“There’s a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don’t, and that secret is this: It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write.”
The War of Art
For me, it’s all of these and some egg whites with medium-cut onions.
Until next week,
-Kiran
Road accidents in the United States - Statistics & Facts | Statista
I’m not distinguishing between the severities of crashes(from dented bumper to a full on fatal highway collision); just pointing out the number of overall incidents.
Why do we call planes planes? I mean, wouldn’t it be way cooler to say, “Yeah I took a bird of steel from New York to LA?”
Within Silicon Valley, some startup ideas just don’t seem to be a real value add case but someone is convinced that more technology is what’s needed. Sometimes, the best businesses need to be reluctantly pulled into the world.
Personal tastes may vary from person to person; some people may consider egg whites w/ onion and salt & pepper to be an abysmal breakfast. 😀
If you liked this piece, make sure to subscribe by adding your email below!