The Optimization Trap

I am an optimist. I’m a dreamer and I like to create things. And I’m sure many of you are the same way. Which means we’re always thinking about how we can make things better, how we can improve a process, how we can optimize.

And by focusing on that horizon of “how do I take that thing and make it better,” we project ourselves into the future. We think -- OK, the thing I’m doing today is not the best thing, but by tomorrow, or next week, by next month, or it’s going to be great. 

This is a trap. 

When we do this, we’re distracted by our thoughts. Instead of living in the present and focusing on what we’re doing now, we’re focused on the next step. 

So how do you avoid this trap? 

Focus every day on trying to get just a little bit better. This is a great teaching from Charlie Munger. The idea here is that every day, try to get a little bit better than you were today -- just a little, incremental, tiny amount. If you do that, you’ll make incredible progress throughout your life -- progress that didn’t seem possible at the beginning. And this is different from being distracted and thinking too far in the future, because you’re focusing on that little progress today, not tomorrow. 

And if you think about it, this idea is built into the very model of the SaaS industry. I see companies that a decade ago were so small -- and they were selling and building what seemed like a tiny feature. But things compound over time, so the companies kept getting a tiny bit better every day -- not dramatically better -- and 10 years later they’re now monster-sized companies. Their improvement isn’t because of a whole new dimension to what they were doing, or a whole new complexity -- it was just incremental progress. 

OK...but then how do you balance not getting distracted, with tapping into big external shifts and trends? 

The two seem in some ways in conflict. But if you approach it correctly, the two can be in perfect harmony, because external trends or shifts in the world don’t usually happen overnight. They usually happen over a very, very long horizon. 

We’re still, for example, in the beginnings of the massive shift that has been powered by the internet -- and that has been going on now for over 20 years. So it is a LONG horizon. But it’s important to be on the right side of history of these massive shifts. And then, once you have a good sense or know that you are on that path, you can pull back and start focusing on incremental progress in that area. And as long as you have discovered something that people care about or people value, you can continue to hone that thing over time. 

Tune in to Seeking Wisdom to hear more on this topic. 

-DC