Built-In Optimization

A friend dropped by last night who also happens to be a colleague, and we inevitably talked about work, amongst other aspects of our lives. But one of the things that came up was around optimization of activities, which seems to be something most people are looking to do. However, I asked him whether he had ever thought of exactly what he is trying to optimize.

This started with a conversation about someone we know who will throw his own mother under a bus in order to optimize the money he puts in his pocket, but it burns a lot of their social bridges. However, we were looking at it more from the personal level for ourselves, and if what we are focusing our time on, is leading to what we would want to optimize.

I think that many people end up optimizing the effort that they put into something, trying to conserve the time or energy, even if doing so doesn't lead them to what they actually want. For example, is someone is in sales (I work in a sales department with sellers), they of course want to sell and make money. However often, their activities are leaning more toward minimizing their effort, maximizing their free time, but falling short of their ultimate goal, making more money. There is nothing wrong with this per se, unless their is a cost to falling short.

There is always an opportunity cost.

I think a lot of people are looking to optimize and maximize, but are trying to do it in ways that conflict with each other, or don't align on the timescale. For some things, the hard work has to be put in well before there is the chance to reap any benefits, but if looking to minimize effort, any work performed might be far from effective, meaning it is actually not optimizing the return, it is diminishing it.

I was thinking about this a little last night after my friend had left, as I prepped my daughter's breakfast. I do this every weekend, as she wakes up early, and doing so gives my wife and I an extra hour or so in bed. And last night, I also prepped a packet of Lego my friend had bought for her, as a belated birthday present. I opened the packets and put each of them into a separate little bowl, optimizing the process. If the goal is to build the item, searching through all the mixed pieces just isn't efficient. Yet, perhaps that can be part of the fun too.

But this is more than just being systematic, it is about understanding one's wants and the conditions and interdependencies. For example, a seller might want to have some whale accounts to mine rather than chasing a lot of smaller accounts to make their numbers, but those whale accounts don't just fall in the lap, and the sale cycle can be very long with little reward along the way. Most people (and companies) aren't willing to spend the time and effort required to understand the prospect and develop the relationships. Those that do however, will find themselves being able to later put in less effort for more reward.

It is an investment, right?

Similarly, everyone talks about wanting more free time, but nothing really comes for free. For most of us at least, that time gets bought with prior work, so if we are looking to maximize the amount of free time we have, we should look at making ourselves as effective as possible in the work periods. But, that doesn't maximize our free time now, does it?

I guess the question we need to consider is what kinds of results we are looking for, and then spending time to work out what it will likely take to get there. If we aren't willing to do what it takes, perhaps we shouldn't even start considering trying and instead find something else to spend our attention and effort on. Perhaps it might even be healthier to do it this way, because then we would explicitly accept our position, rather than get disappointed by not getting the results we didn't try for.

Of course, it is great to have dreams, but when those dreams start to affect our expectations of results without us putting in the effort to build them into reality, they become hurdles instead. If we want more something like more free time, we also have to imagine the conditions we want to be able to enjoy in that free time, because we can all get all the time we have, just by doing nothing - but is that what we mean by having free time?

Probably not.

Taraz
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