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How to Cure an Optimization Craze

On embracing deliberate defeat and doing the thing.

Stephan Joppich
Pragmatic Wisdom
7 min readJan 14, 2025

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Photo by Alice Dietrich via Unsplash

My first writer’s desk was a white, rectangular specimen from a Swedish furniture retailer. Its height was adjustable, and its surface was so large that I could’ve comfortably laid on it — the ideal desk, it seemed.

But then, as I was stuck in a rut one day, my desk suddenly seemed inadequate. Too big, too hefty, too minimalist. I craved change. And so, I disassembled the desk, put it on eBay, and decided to no longer work from home. From then on, I ventured to do all my writing at the university library.

Writing at the library was great for a while. I always sat down at the same desk. I felt productive. Until, one day, the library seemed inadequate, too. The air was stuffy, the productivity vibe distracted me, and anyway, there was no good coffee within a reachable radius.

So, here I am. I spent the entire morning browsing for new desks. The next desk will be the one. I’m sure of it.

While browsing for new desks, I randomly remembered a parable from the book Resonance by the sociologist Hartmut Rosa. Here’s how I recalled it just then:

Quinn and Blaire are aspiring painters. They both love to paint, but their approaches are very different. Quinn is a conscientious painter…

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Pragmatic Wisdom
Pragmatic Wisdom

Published in Pragmatic Wisdom

Simple lessons for our complicated modern times, drawn from philosophy, religion, and common sense

Stephan Joppich
Stephan Joppich

Written by Stephan Joppich

Engineer turned philosophy student • I write about loneliness, transformative books, and other pseudo-deep stuff that keeps me up at night • stephanjoppich.com

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