What if we stopped trying to optimise everything? A lesson in why you should always listen to your mother…
We live in an age of self-optimisation.
Better sleep. Better nutrition. Better fitness. Better productivity. Better focus. Better recovery. Better habits.
There is always something we could improve.
And technology makes the situation ever more overwhelming.
Our watches, rings and other wearables tell us how well we slept, how much we moved, how stressed we were, how recovered we are and whether or not our heart rate is where it should be.
There is nothing inherently wrong with any of this.
In fact, much of it can be incredibly useful.
However.
There are two things that we must keep in mind every day.
If you want to optimise everything in your life, it’s better to tackle things sequentially rather than try to do it all at once.
Make sure you know what elements of your life are already optimised. In other words, what’s already good enough at this specific time. Otherwise, you can spend a lot of time tinkering furiously to add 1% extra value to areas that are already pretty good, and you could miss out on adding 50% effectiveness to something that’s currently nowhere near where you'd like it to be.
Everyday I wonder whether, in our enthusiasm to optimise ourselves, we have lost sight of something rather important:
What is already working?
And perhaps even more importantly:
What actually matters to me at this point in my life?
The problem with endless possibility
One of the challenges we face today is that we have access to an extraordinary number of possibilities.
There is always another approach to try.
Another training programme.
Another diet.
Another productivity system.
Another app.
Another expert telling us what we should be doing. (Or more likely in my case, telling you what you shouldn’t be doing. Remember the golden rule - DO LESS BETTER)
Another metric we could be tracking.
The problem isn't that these things are necessarily wrong.
The problem is that they aren't necessarily right for all of us at every stage of life.
What works brilliantly for one person may be completely irrelevant to another.
Yet we are constantly exposed to other people's routines, recommendations and measures of success.
It becomes very easy to look at what everyone else is doing and conclude that we should be doing it too.
We become distracted by possibility.
And possibility can be remarkably seductive.
We aren't always very good at knowing what matters
After working with thousands of senior leaders over the past 25 years, one thing I've noticed is that people can become remarkably disconnected from their own signals.
They know a huge amount about what they should be doing.
They know what the latest research says.
They know what the latest app recommends. (Just last week I spoke to someone who was joking that he had an app to help him with literally everything he does).
They know what successful people appear to do.
But that doesn't necessarily mean they know what they need.
Sometimes the most useful question isn't:
“What else could I improve?”
It's, “What is actually making the biggest difference to me?”
That is a very different question.
When the data becomes the distraction
Take sleep as an example.
Technology has given us the ability to measure our sleep in ways that would have seemed extraordinary only a few years ago.
And there can be real value in noticing patterns.
But I've seen people become so concerned about their sleep score that even when they wake up feeling good, they take one look at their data and decide that they haven't slept well and suddenly they don't feel so energetic.
The data has become more important than the experience.
That's a crazy situation.
The technology was supposed to help us understand ourselves.
Instead, sometimes we allow it to tell us how we feel.
Perhaps there are occasions when the best sleep metric is simply:
“How do I feel this morning?”
The same applies elsewhere.
How productive were you?
How many steps did you take?
How many calories did you consume?
How long did you focus?
How much did you exercise?
How recovered are you?
These can all be useful pieces of information.
But they are not the same thing as understanding whether your life is working.
Perhaps we need to become better at noticing
There's a very simple skill that doesn't get nearly as much coverage as optimisation:
Paying attention.
Pay attention to when you have energy.
Pay attention to the work that makes you feel engaged.
Pay attention to the people you feel better around.
Pay attention to when you think clearly.
Pay attention to what leaves you feeling depleted.
Pay attention to the habits that seem to make your life easier.
Pay attention to what you keep doing successfully without having to force yourself to do it.
And then ask:
What can I learn from that?
Rather than constantly trying to fix ourselves, perhaps we should spend more time understanding ourselves.
Leverage before you change
This is something I've increasingly come to believe in my work with organisations too.
When something isn't working, our instinct is often to introduce something new.
A new programme.
A new process.
A new initiative.
A new behaviour.
But sometimes the better question is:
Where are we already getting the result we want?
What is happening there?
What is different?
What can we learn from it?
And can we do more of that?
The same principle applies to individuals.
Maybe you don't need a completely new routine.
Maybe there is already something you do that gives you energy, clarity or focus.
Maybe you simply need to understand why it works and create more opportunities for it.
Don't automatically fix what isn't broken.
Find what works and make better use of it.
From optimisation to alignment
Perhaps the goal shouldn't be to become an optimised version of ourselves.
Perhaps it should be to become a better-aligned version of ourselves.
Aligned with what matters.
Aligned with how we naturally work best.
Aligned with the things that give us energy.
Aligned with the people and environments in which we perform well.
Aligned with our own experience rather than constantly comparing ourselves with someone else's.
That doesn't mean ignoring data.
It doesn't mean abandoning technology.
And it certainly doesn't mean stopping learning.
It means putting those things back in their proper place.
Data is information. It isn't the answer.
Technology can help us notice things.
But we still have to decide what matters.
And sometimes the most useful piece of data available to us is the one we have been overlooking all along:
How am I actually doing?
Maybe before asking ourselves what we should optimise next, we should ask a simpler question:
What's already working — and how can I get more from it?
You might not need to change everything if you focus better on amplifying what's already working and changing only what really matters.
Life could be easier and less stressful. Calmer and more enjoyable.
And by the way, the guy with an app for everything actually found that the biggest improvements he’s experienced lately were triggered when he finally started using a standing desk. The same standing desk that his mother told him months ago that he should buy, install in his office and use at some point every day.
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