the illusion of over-optimization

episode 263 · better. podcast

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Summary

can you over-optimize your business? no. optimization means putting yourself in the best possible position given your constraints, so by definition there’s no such thing as too much of it. what people call over-optimization is almost always something else, and once you name it, the whole complaint falls apart.

1. optimization is putting yourself in the most favorable position you can given your circumstances. wasting time on data that doesn’t matter, fiddling with tiny tasks you should have delegated, avoiding the real growth work, that isn’t over-optimization. that’s just playing business.

2. I see the same confusion in the health world. people complain about health maxing, sleep scores, HRV, resting heart rate. but you can’t over-optimize your health any more than your business. usually the loudest complainers are people who got scared of how deep the rabbit hole goes and don’t want to put the time in.

3. here’s the real issue nobody names: it’s not the optimization, it’s the stress and anxiety around it. a 64 sleep score isn’t hurting you. the fact that it ruins your morning is. the email from your bookkeeper isn’t the problem, it’s just numbers on a screen. the dread you feel looking at it is the problem.

4. so the thing to actually work on isn’t the data, it’s your stress threshold. the stress isn’t going anywhere, there’s no level of business or health where you stop feeling it. you raise your tolerance through mindset: meditation, breath work, prayer, therapy, training that teaches you to sit with discomfort.

5. stop throwing rocks at the data. you can’t over-optimize. you can only keep putting yourself in a more favorable position and get better at carrying the weight that comes with it. try harder.

Transcript

you can’t over-optimize

Can you over optimize your business? No, I don’t really think that you can. So when we look at the definition of optimal, it is the best, most favorable, or most advantageous outcome, condition, or solution that can be achieved within a specific set of constraints or circumstances. So no, you can’t over optimize. Can you waste your time on data that doesn’t matter? Can you focus on tiny activities you shouldn’t be doing, you should have delegated, or you’re avoiding the hard work, the growth work, those kind of things. Yes, you absolutely can do those things, but that’s not optimization, that’s something else. That’s just, that’s playing business. That’s not optimization. When you are actually optimizing something, you are putting yourself in the best possible situation given your circumstances or your constraints. So no, you can’t over optimize anything.

All you can do is continue to optimize, become more profitable, to get things done faster, to free up more time. You can’t really over optimize. You’ll run into a point where you just can’t become any more optimal, in which case, you’re given a new set of circumstances, new constraints, maybe you have more cash, less profit, and there’s anything that can happen to where you’re having to optimize in a different set.

the same thing in health and fitness

So why am I talking about this? I see this in the health space. I have a foot in the business space, and I have a foot in the health and fitness space. So if you didn’t know, I run another podcast called Garage Gym Athlete, and it’s actually much larger than this podcast in terms of audience and downloads. And something I see happening lately, a lot of people talking about over optimization or health maxing and all this stuff in the health space. They’re like, people are over optimizing their sleep scores, the whoop, all these things, like they’re too worried about the resting heart rate and HRV and how many steps they’re getting and all that, like over optimization, right? And it’s becoming really frustrating for me because I feel the same way about your health. You can’t over optimize your health.

You’re given a set of genetics, you can only express them through so many different variables, right? And then you can optimize what you were given. So that’s epigenetics. You have your genetics, and then you can work and eat in a certain way, train in a certain way that optimizes fully your genetics, and you can’t over optimize that. This just goes back to the same business principle. What I see a lot of people complaining about are people who aren’t really in the health and fitness space. They aren’t athletes. They don’t take it that seriously. They’re maybe business owners who kind of got into health and they see how deep the rabbit hole goes and they’re scared. And they don’t wanna have to spend that much time on their health and their fitness, but it absolutely is a possibility. So you can’t optimize it.

And the reason this is frustrating for me is because these same people wouldn’t ever talk about over optimizing their business.

it’s not optimization, it’s the stress

And so what’s the real root issue here if we’re talking about health and fitness or we’re talking about business? Is there such a thing as over optimization? The answer is no, but what there is, and this is what people are really hinting at, they’re just not talking about it, is the anxiety and stress that these things cause, that optimization causes. That’s what people are really hating on. You can’t over optimize your resting heart rate. There’s no danger in that unless you’re doing activities that are starting to become harmful. If you’re like, no, I want my resting heart rate to be 35, so I’m gonna run a marathon every day until it happens. It’s like, okay, I don’t know if we’re optimizing anymore, right?

Because we go back to the definition, and do you wanna be in the most favorable or most advantageous condition if you’re running a marathon every day to optimize resting heart rate, but you’re breaking down your back, your knees, your ankles, everything in the process? You’re not in a favorable outcome. That’s not the most desirable outcome anymore. So you see how that’s not optimization? It’s the same in your business. If you’re just chasing more and more profit, but you fired everybody on your team and you’re just doing all the work just to optimize to become the most profitable, you actually are putting yourself in a less favorable outcome because you no longer have leverage. You fired your entire team to become more profitable. So it’s the same thing. It’s not really the optimization that is crushing people. It’s the stress and anxiety around it.

And that’s where I want people to start thinking, because could your sleep score on a daily basis be detrimental to your mental health? 100 percent. If you’re sitting there every morning and you got a 64 sleep score and that stresses you out, that’s the actual problem. It’s the stress and anxiety of knowing the data, not the sleep score itself. Because if you could optimize your sleep score to 100, or if you woke up one day and it was 50 and you really didn’t care, again, there’s no optimization problem. No different with your business. If you can just continually work on your business and optimize it and you become more profitable while growing a team, there’s no problem with it. But just like on the health side, doing that in business can cause you a ton of stress and anxiety.

work on your stress threshold, not the data

And that’s the only real thing that we’re dealing with in business, in health, and anywhere else. We’re dealing with ourselves. We’re dealing with a version of ourselves that is stressed out, is anxious. So what we need to work on, so we’re not in that state, is our mindset. What are we able to handle? Do we need to do some more meditation? Do we need to do some more breath work, prayer? What is it for you that’s going to help alleviate that stress and anxiety? Because business is not too stressful. Optimizing your health is not too stressful. It’s really only what you can take on. And if your stress threshold is really low, you can’t take on a lot of stress, you need to realize that is your constraint. It’s not, oh, I’m not an ops person, I don’t do the dashboards. That’s not it.

It stresses you out to know your actual finances. It stresses you out to get the email from your bookkeeper that shows you’re not as profitable this month. If that didn’t stress you out, why would it matter? It’s just numbers on a screen, right? So that is what you need to work on. And that’s the only thing I came here to say today, because I’m seeing this in two worlds. I’m seeing it in my health and fitness world with people talking about over-optimization, but I’ve also seen a lot of athletes get super stressed when they see their sleep score not heading in the right direction or their resting heart rate ticks up for a few days. And I’ve also seen business owners get incredibly stressed when they’re faced with data.

I help them sit down and I’m like, hey, we’re gonna actually build your KPI dashboards, but we gotta go retroactive for six months and look at all this stuff, and they stare those numbers in the face and they’re stressed out. Nothing’s wrong, it’s just data. It’s just reporting the truth. There shouldn’t be stress and anxiety around that, but there is, for each one of us, for different reasons. So that is the only thing that you can actually work on: increasing your tolerance for stress. Because it’s not going anywhere, ever. There’s no level of business and there’s no level of health in which you’re no longer stressed about those things. You will be stressed to a certain degree, always. So what do you do? You work on your stress threshold. How do you do that? You have to work on your mindset.

It goes back to the entire premise of this podcast, where I started with: if you become better, your business becomes better. Part of you becoming better is having a higher stress tolerance. So can you exercise in a way in which you have to deal with stress tolerance? Can you go to therapy to deal with stress better? Can you purposefully work on increasing your stress tolerance? 100 percent. You can do those things, and that’s really your only limiting factor if you have a ton of stress and anxiety around whatever you’re trying to get better at in life. So start thinking about the real thing. Stop throwing rocks at data. That’s what people are doing. They’re like, oh, over-optimization, health maxing. Where’s business maxing? Why aren’t people talking about that? It doesn’t exist because you can’t over-optimize. You’re putting yourself in the most favorable condition possible.

So the only thing that really matters is for you to not get stressed out about numbers and data. Try harder. Try harder.