What are you optimizing for?
My friend Charbel told me this old story, one that his parents told him often. It’s about Watermelons…
“You can only hold one watermelon in each hand,
else you drop them all.” -Lebanese Proverb
You can only have a few interests and actually carry them, least you try and carry more you end up dropping them all (and likely they are broken beyond repair). I was challenged because I am a chronic over-committer (is that a word?). I hate saying “no” and love the excitment of the new. However, the end result of that approach is nothing completed and most definitely nothing done well.
Another instance of this was my buddy Joel (who is an expert digital nomad) responded to my trite remark about the life purpose of a digital nomad.
He responded with purpose being tied to “what are they optimizing for”. At first I thought it was a deflection response but after thinking about it I came around. It’s more about how your activities (life) correlate with what you are trying to achieve (optimize). It’s less macro and more micro in scope. It’s looking at seasons of life instead of feeling like you have your whole life figured out.
Interesting…
A third rendition of this same philosophy came to me via a newsletter from Ramit. He shared a challenging image from the Wall Street Journal (the image says it all)…
I love and hate this at the same time. I love it because it challenges me to ask the question of what it is I prioritize (giving clarity), but hate it because I hate the things I prioritize that are not productive.
All three of these came back to me recently while I was in the process of making decisions about a product we are launching this year. The decision was technical in nature that would have long term consequences. Pro’s and con’s abounded on both sides, and no clear direction….I asked “what are we optimizing for”. The general response was that we needed to ship something as soon as possible to get customer validation (ie revenue) and further iterate from there.
Boom! The decision was made for us.
Give it a try and let me know how it goes. :)
