Why A 100% Optimized Life Is A Terrible Idea

For three years, I was obsessed with optimizing my entire life.

Especially during my Pokemon Go years, I tracked every waking minute and made sure it was spent on either the game or maintaining health or school. Although I topped the national Pokemon Go rankings, sacrifices had to be made. One time I walked out of a party just to spend more time with the game, just because I was afraid of both wasting time and falling behind. And I’m a very social person.

Still, before this year, I took time-blocking to the extreme. Every waking minute was filled with a seemingly important task, hoping to get the best future possible. Meanwhile, I was unaware that my life was entirely structured around things I had already done, not challenging myself on the social, relational, or career front.

That’s the problem.

Problem: Being fragile and not stepping off the comfort zone

As I wrote here, being fragile means fearing what you do not know and can predict. If you are fragile, you depend on everything following the exact course and are harmed by uncertainty and black swan events. You are also afraid of trying new uncomfortable things since it looks like wasting time from a glance, like social parties.