Beware of Optimization

Photo by Hernan Sanchez on Unsplash

If you seek tranquility, do less. Or do what’s essential — what the logos of a social being requires, and to the requisite way. Which brings a double satisfaction: to do less better.

Because most of what we say and do is not essential. If you can eliminate it, you’ll have more time, and more tranquility. Ask yourself at every moment, is this necessary?

But we need to eliminate unnecessary assumptions as well. To eliminate the unnecessary actions that follow. — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations IV:27

There’s a wonderful essay by the Lesswrong contributor Zvi on the concept of slack. Although Zvi deliberately omits a formal definition of the term from his article, I found the general idea easy to grasp. To have slack with respect to a certain resource is to be able to suffer from a setback that forces you to use said resource and have it not be a big deal. Some examples:

• If you lose your job, savings that would cover your living expenses for a year provides slack in terms of money.
• If you need to do extra work to complete a project at work, the fact that you usually take weekends off provides slack in terms of time.
• If your girlfriend/boyfriend breaks up with you, the fact that you maintained other friendships provides slack in terms of social interactions.