Constantly Optimizing or Occasionally Maximizing?

The one who is only able to optimize will not have the resilience and stamina to handle situations where maximizing is required.

The one who is also able to maximize (i.e. to do whatever is required in a certain situation) will not only be able to cope with “emergencies”, but also to be a better and more serene optimizer in the long term.

I heard this on the Modern Wisdom podcast episode with Alex Hormozi, and I’ve been thinking hard about it ever since.

This post is a bit serious. I’ll break the seriousness with some AI-generated pictures of myself as a crocodile. Here’s me, lost in the horizon thinking about the podcast.

Healthy routines and habits are great, and I am all or setting a very high bar when it comes to lifestyle standards. When one becomes aware of what is health promoting and what is harmful, choosing how to conduct one’s day is quite simple business. You eat natural and whole foods, you exercise regularly, you sleep a lot, you stay away from your devices and go for a walk surrounded nature. Drawing hard lines around these things is necessary and, if you ask me, a must. But not to the point where they generate an obsession that will soon present its own price to pay. At what point do these lines enslave us instead of working for us? And what will happen when we’ll be required to take a step out of them if we cannot even consider the idea of doing so?

I

What I am trying to say is that occasional exposure to “something different”, to “something I’d not normally do” is probably just as good for my mental and physical health as it is the standard practice of my most optimal routines. I know this might sound very basic and “duh”, but the reason I am writing these lines is exactly because I have been imprisoned within these self-imposed lines for a long time. I still am, to be honest, but I am working on my way out.

I am starting to recognize that I have been using type-1 diabetes, running, productivity and all these things as shields from living life fully. Let me exemplify and explain this slightly better.

I have my sleep schedule: in bed at 9pm, up at 5.30am. I am a morning person so that works just great for me. That of course has some cascading impact on life situations. Things as social events in the evening are a “no” for me because I get my dinner at 6.30-7pm, dim down the lights at 8pm and of course any stimulation around that time that would come from an evening out is not really welcome. Sleeping is essential for type-1 diabetes management (it is), so I protect my sleep time like it was a religion.

Me again, out in the evening. Something you rarely see.

I also train intensely, and such intensity requires me to allow an adequate amount of rest, of proper relaxation. I typically find this relaxation in reading books and just enjoy some silence alone, all of which is extremely beneficial for mental health. Skipping the down time would inevitably compromise my body’s ability to recover and my mental sharpness at work or in any other daily operation, not to mention the gradual accumulation of stress.

These are other valid reasons for me to stick to my schedule, like it was a religion. My long-term health depends on it, and since my health is my absolute top-1 priority, anything that is not conducive to it must be avoided.

In other words, I am constantly seeking optimization. I am optimizing my lifestyle for my long-term health. That makes a ton of sense, and I’ll keep doing that. But there’s a subtlety in all of this that has been undermining my pursuit of health and happiness, and I have finally started to see it.

II

First of all, I am “seeking happiness”. And as for anything that we do not have but wish we had, the pursuit generates a sense of unease. As Robert Pirsig says in his masterpiece Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values, “The only Zen you find on tops of mountains is the Zen you bring there.”

The first mental shift I had was that I was pursuing something, perfect health, that is not realistic, and I have been doing so by sticking to an optimal routine that is not sustainable. I was aiming for the mountain top but not paying attention to this very step, and not taking into account the possibility that I could slip, fall, get hurt, or whatever other inconvenience. I was pretending that my path toward the top be perfect, smooth, with no fatigue, not even a drop of sweat.

Coming back to my routines, I started to wander what happens to the person who only knows a perfect morning and evening routine (me) when that routine cannot be followed?

For instance, am I really sure that sacrificing a dinner with all my friends for a perfect night of sleep is a trade-off worth doing? For sure, chronic sleep deprivation is detrimental. But if for once I stay up late and “maximize” a social gathering - share joy with my friends -, the price paid in terms of sleep will arguably be overcompensated by the happiness of laughing with my friends.

Am I really sure that pulling an all-nighter to deal with an emergency, or just because I want to go all-in into something, will be a net negative? Yes, there will be consequences on the day after: more shaky blood glucose, less energy in my workout, more craving for junk food or unnecessary snacks, a less optimal morning routine and a decreased attention span in my daily activities.

But knowing I’ll have to handle these factors already puts me in a good position. I can plan and minimize the backfiring effect. Also, coming to peace with this puts me in a much better position to fully enjoy whatever “less optimal” event life throws at me. I’ll have to trade my 9pm bedtime for an evening out with my friends, but the benefit of building strong bonds with humans I deeply care about will far outweigh the detriment of losing a couple of hours of sleep that night.

Besides planned social situations, who knows when a real-life emergency will hit or someone close to us needs our help at “inconvenient times”? around the clock?

Or what if I suddenly decide to run a night ultra? Or to go to a concert, attend a special event, spend time with the people I love simply because that is the right thing to do?

III

Saying no by default to everything is stupid, and I am writing this article because that’s exactly what I have been doing for a long time. I certainly place immense value in being fast at saying “no” and slow and considerate at saying “yes”, after all what we choose to do or not to do defines how we get to spend our most precious resource, time, and the quality of the activities we do ultimately defines happiness.

Here I am, sharing an evening meal with my loved ones for once. Something that I am keen to do now, even if I have to trade some sleep for it. Emotional health is just as important.

But our lives are also made of stuff that throws us out of balance for a while and pretending that said stuff doesn’t or shouldn’t exist is a recipe for disaster and unhappiness. The “struggle” of not being able to optimize for a while will ultimately expand my experience, my ability to cope, my resilience, my self-confidence too, and I bet the overall quality of my life.

I feel freer and lighter now, having this awareness. If my friends ask me out for an occasional regroup, I’ll be able to say yes, knowing that there will be some consequences for my type-1 diabetes but growing more mature to handle them. I will handle a night out by adjusting the following day accordingly - running at a reduced intensity, because an unrested body is more prone to injury; stay away from junk food because having it within sight will mean I’ll binge eat on all of it, living slower for a day to let the stress come down.

That way, I’ll be more equipped whenever the “black swans” of life meet me along the way. I’ll have the practical tools and knowledge to tame them - adjusting my boluses, my workouts, my food intake, etc. - and the mental ones too - just accepting that the path toward the top of the mountain will have some struggle, and that the true Zen is accepting that struggle and letting go of the idea of “having to arrive”.

As Oliver Burkeman nicely puts it in his wonderful The Imperfectionist:

“There’ll always be some consequences; equally, though, there will never be anything worse than “some consequences.” So you just have to decide which consequences you’re more willing to incur this time around.”

I can and will do my best to optimize as much as possible (say, 90% of the time), and accept that life also requires us to maximize when required (say, 10% of the time). Writing these lines was a therapy. Now I truly feel I can enjoy the maximizing knowing that the optimizing is always working in the background.