Why I Don't Optimize My Time Anymore

00:00 — Opening

Hey, welcome to Slow Builds.

In a recent video, I talked about how habits and tracking slowly turn into pressure. How something that starts as helpful can quietly take over your life.

And that got me thinking about another version of the same thing. Not tracking, but optimization. Trying to fit everything in. Like you're over planning, you're pre-planning, those color coded calendars you see sometimes. Every hour is blocked off, every day is filled. The kind of fridge calendar that looks perfectly organized, but it's also just completely full.

I tried to live like that for a while, and what I realized is that tracking things and optimizing your entire life are two very different things.

Now, I still track things. I still write things down. I still use reminders and list every day. What I stopped doing was trying to optimize every minute of my time.

Those two things sound similar, but in my mind, they're not. They're not completely different, but they are different things.

01:22 — Why I Track at All

For me, tracking isn't about discipline. It's about just getting things out of my head.

If something is floating around, it's constantly in my mind, it becomes distracting. So I put it somewhere I trust. And for me, the main places I put things are Apple Reminders, Apple Notes, and I'll leave important emails unopened so they're unread. If I even read them and open them, I'll once I'm out, I'll mark them as unread again. That way I know it's there, 'cause email's a place I know I'll look.

Once something is parked somewhere that I know I check, sort of on a regular basis, my mind can remove it and not think about it. So it allows my mind to relax and not stress about that, 'cause it knows — okay, it doesn't have to remember to pay that bill — 'cause it knows that I'm going to either check my reminders and see it's time to pay the bill, or it knows that there's an unread email like the paid invoice. So I know I'm gonna look at my email, I'm gonna see that message unread and I know I'm gonna take care of it.

So I don't have to think about the invoice or the bill because my mind has one thing to remember and it does that automatically.

02:50 — When Optimization Went Too Far

What I find is, if you don't do that, where things start to break down was when systems turned into that pressure. The over planning, the overstructure, treating every day like it needed to be maximized.

If the day didn't go according to plan, it felt like you failed. So all those little wins that you had, they're lost because you didn't finish all your things you wanted to do. And it's not because I wasn't doing anything, it's because the system said I wasn't doing everything.

You keep seeing those unchecked items on your list or your workout app is telling you like you didn't hit those goals, those targets that you wanted to hit for that day. And it just starts nagging at you. So the next day, you try to double down. You add more effort, you push harder. And after a while, it starts to snowball. It becomes a real burden until eventually you either burn out or you start removing things from the list. Or you lower the goals just so you feel like you can achieve and you can feel like you're hitting everything.

You want that little adrenaline rush of checking stuff off. And that's when I realized, it's not right.

04:26 — The Part I Still Love: Small Wins

But there's one part of the system that I still love.

Like I just said, you try to rewrite your systems by removing things, lowering goals, just so you can try to hit those targets. But I took it a different way. It's all about those small wins.

So what I do is sometimes on a weekend, like I'll open up the room — if I'm down doing my run or I'm out in the garage or even eating breakfast or even the night before sometimes — I'll just open up my phone and I'll say, okay, quick list. And either in notes or in reminders, I'll make a little list of stuff to do. Like, okay, tomorrow I wanna clean up the garage. That's a big one. I want to wash the cars, I want to check the tire pressure. Just small things like that.

So it's nothing fancy. It's nothing optimized. But what happens is I get to go out and I get to check those things off.

It's like this video. I know I had to do a video today. It's starting to become a little pressure, so I'm trying to find ways around not making it a pressure, but it's just a matter of — hey, today I knew I had to do a video, so I'm doing it and I'll check it off. And it's those small wins that make you feel really good. Not because you're being efficient, but because you know you showed up, you wanted to do something and you did it. And you get to check it off and that makes you feel good for the rest of the day. And actually a lot of times it makes you feel like you can do more.

06:10 — A Thought About Runs and Knowing When to Stop

And that reminds me of something — I don't know where I've seen it, where I read it or anything like that. But it's like, let's say you wanted to hit 5K. So you do your 5K.

You know most days you don't want to do your run and if you go too far it becomes a burden. You're hurt, you're out of breath, like whatever. But on some days you're really good and you know you can go forever and you're so used to not feeling great that you want to hit that not-good part. Because then you know you've pushed your body to the limit basically.

And some days you don't need to do that. So what it said is on the days when you don't need to push that extra hard, you're just doing it to do it. You're just showing up to do your thing and you don't need it — it's almost like a recovery day. So on your recovery day, you don't want to push yourself past the comfort zone, because you're going to hit that place where you feel uncomfortable and you realize, "I don't like this. I hated it. It sucked."

But before you get there, you have that feeling, "Oh, I could go forever. I feel great about this." That's when you stop. Because if you stop there, the next time you go to go do it, you're going to remember, "Oh, it was great last time. Today I got to go a little harder." Because it's in your program. It's in your plan. So you don't feel that dread, that bad feeling to go there.

I always think about that when I'm doing a run sometimes. It's like, I know I have to do it, and if I push myself too far, tomorrow I'm just gonna remember I didn't like it. So I don't wanna go there all the time.

08:27 — Where Tracking Became Unhealthy for Me

But back to it — that was a little ramble on the side.

There was one place where tracking did cross a line for me. And that was, funny enough, it was with workouts. It was tracking the weight, it was tracking my calories, and it was tracking my streaks.

I talked about it in the other video — it was the running, and really everything. But running was the big one. It interfered with vacations, going out, things like that. It just took over my life. But at first it really helped because it kept me focused. But as the streaks got longer and those numbers got bigger, it's all I really cared about. I didn't stop being healthy. I wasn't training my body anymore for the healthy benefits or the gains or whatever. I was just trying to manage a scoreboard really, and that wasn't good.

And the rule I learned from that is: systems are good until the metric replaces the intention. As soon as I'm serving the system instead of the goal, it's time to loosen the grip.

I've done that with the running, with tracking workouts. I've done it with tracking even at work — like how many bugs I'm fixing, how many PRs I'm pushing out. I've taken all that away. And I just focus on quality and just staying within a reasonable — I know my limits basically.

So I keep the systems that give me clarity and momentum now. And I dropped all the ones that were just putting my attention on the wrong thing and making me go the wrong route and becoming unhealthy and interfering with just life.

10:16 — Big Goals, Small Steps

So I still believe in big goals. I believe in the big hairy audacious goals — I can't remember what the exact words are. And they're the kind of goals that give you direction, not daily instructions.

But I don't live inside those goals. I break them down into small, boring, checkable steps. The big goal points the compass and the small wins, those small little goals, they keep me moving, they keep me motivated to reach that end goal.

Because like they always say, it's not the destination, it's the journey.

11:06 — A Real Example: How I Plan Vacations

So a real example outside of running and stuff like that — for me and my family, it's vacations.

Once we decide on a location, like where we're going to go, I'll look up all the things that feel like the must-do experiences. So like right now we're planning a trip. Well, we just did one in Mexico for Christmas and now I'm planning a trip to Puerto Rico for next Christmas.

So what I do is you do a deep dive and you find those must-haves. You have X amount of days, you look up a place and you figure out — okay, if you go here and you're not from there, these are the things that you have to do. Because if you don't do them, you'd regret it. And if you never go back, you're always gonna think about it.

But everything else around that, like you do look up all these things, they become the flexibility of a plan. So I'll make a bunch of lists, a bunch of different ideas — food places, excursions, attractions and sites, or I'll even plan out small days and locations that we could pop into or see. But it's built with room to shift because obviously tropical places or even other places, there's always weather, there's traffic, there's delays, there's flights, somebody's tired, sick, anything can happen 'cause life happens.

And I've been on vacations before where they're planned and they're scheduled for every single hour. You know what you're doing every single day. Those become exhausting. You go to Disney World and you got seven days and you got to hit it all. And by the time you come home, you need a vacation from the vacation. Every activity is locked into a timeline. And the moment one of those little things goes off the rails, the whole trip just derails. And it feels like a complete failure. Like, why did we even come? This vacation is a complete waste of time and money. And the whole joy is gone.

In my mind, we used to do that. I've done it. I've been on those vacations and it just becomes like the goal is the plan, it's not the vacation itself.

So now when I plan these vacations and these trips, I leave a lot of space for flexibility. I make them loose. Like I said, you gotta have those musts. But you keep things loose where the vacation can flow and you're not locked in. You know you're going to hit those musts, but you still give your time. You give room to enjoy the vacation, to relax. Not every day is go, go, go, and if you miss something, then the whole thing changes.

14:53 — Closing Reflection

So I don't try to optimize every minute of my time anymore.

And that doesn't mean I stopped planning. I still loosely map things out. Just like the vacations, I do that with my life, my days, my weeks. I still have direction for the week. But the targets are more soft.

Obviously at work there's deadlines. You got to hit certain things or certain targets. But in between that end date, there's lots of room for me to maneuver, for me to take a break or to try something out a different direction. So those targets are soft. And if I miss one, it doesn't mean that my days are ruined or even my weeks are ruined. And if I hit one, when you get to check it off, that's when you get that adrenaline. You feel great.

And that small difference of not optimizing everything — loose plans, still tracking, but not to the point that if I miss a day or I didn't hit the number I feel like I failed — the plans now and the tracking just gives me direction and keeps me pointed in the right way. So it doesn't control me. It just gives me freedom to live life, to work at my own pace, and to still get those little moments of joy when you get to check something off.

16:23 — Closing Thoughts

Thanks for watching, and I'd love to see how do other people do this.

Because I find if you've never tracked anything, you've never used reminders, calendars — if you keep your mind full of everything you're supposed to do — you become tired and stressed, and it takes a lot out of you as a person, and it affects the people around you too.

So I find that just doing these basic things — and all this came from years of just building businesses, working with startups, going on client sites, dealing with family, planning trips, working out — you reach a point where you realize if you're not doing something to keep track of everything, your mind is just overwhelmed. So you want a way to get it out, to relax, and just have those safe places you know you're going to look and you're going to check. And it makes a big difference. It really, really does. It gives you time to be creative, think.

I'd love to see what other people use. What systems do you find work? Do you keep it loose? Do you follow something strict? Because even though you might follow a strict system for where to put things — like Getting Things Done — it doesn't mean it's overrunning your life. It just means that you're strict on putting things there because as soon as something pops in you put it there, because you know you're gonna look there.

So just being strict on the system doesn't take the joy out of it. And that's why I would love to see what other people do. I've spent a lot of time trying different ones, being forced to use different ones, and I find the least stress I have and the least formality I have allows me to feel like it's not taking over my life and it's my choice to do it — which makes a big difference I find.

Thanks for watching, leave comments. I still have too many people watching these, which is fine by me I think.

Alright, bye.