The Over-Optimisation Crisis.
Happy Sunday, Reader,
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Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living.
But I would argue that the over-examined life is no better.
When you open Instagram, it’s easy to feel like you’re falling behind. When every reel and story is showing you a seemingly perfect morning routine…
The “High performers” you admire apparently have every single minute of the day scheduled and ready to be checked off their to do list.
But I’m here to tell you that this is all performative, and it doesn’t actually yield great results.
To be truly great, you don’t optimise every waking second.
You work like a lion - in intense short sprints, where you are fully on and focused on the mission.
And then you spend the rest of the day fully off, resting and in recreation. (Literally re-creating yourself, ready for the next sprint.)
When you are obsessed with optimisation, you lose your sense of naivety and curiosity. But that’s where your best ideas will come from.
I read something about Leonardo da Vinci recently that reinforced this idea…
It was about his most overlooked discovery - not how the human anatomy works, or mechanics, or physics - something better.
Something he could have ONLY discovered because he actively wasn’t optimizing every waking second of his life for productivity. And instead was optimising for curiosity.
Most importantly, because he left gaps in his schedule, he had the mental bandwidth to notice this tiny detail, whilst billions of people walk by the same discovery every day.
Da Vinci noticed that when a tree branch splits into smaller branches, the combined thickness of those smaller branches roughly equals the thickness of the original branch.
So if a trunk divides into two limbs, the total area of those two limbs matches the area of the trunk below the split. This pattern repeats all the way up to the smallest twigs.
He also observed the way leaves arrange themselves in spiral patterns around a stem to minimize overlap and maximize sun exposure.
These spiral patterns follow mathematical ratios that were later connected to the Fibonacci sequence.
Both discoveries came from these same first principles - curiosity, wonder and leaning into naivety.
Now tell me, how would you schedule a discovery like that into your morning routine? The 3 minutes between your cold plunge, journaling and affirmations??
The point isn’t that this was a life-changing discovery (to some, maybe)
But the point is, when you become too rigid with routine, productivity-maxxing, and optimisation - you’re not in touch with reality…
And the cost of that is greater than you might think...
Think about how your best ideas come to you.
It’s not when you’re moving from task to task, mindlessly trying to check off as much as you can from your to-do list.
They usually arrive in the gaps in between. In the shower, on a walk, on a drive. Why?
Because they need the space to land. If you do not create that space, you end up creating a routine that you become a slave to.
It feels like progress because you are checking off the boxes each day, but when you look back, you realise the days have blurred into one.
Growth doesn’t always work in a linear fashion.
In fact, oftentimes, it’s one idea, one tiny iteration that skyrockets your business or life, and again, how do you expect those to arrive if you don’t give them the space or time to?
Let me show you a pattern I notice in high-performing entrepreneurs that keeps them stuck at their current level - this is something I work with them 1:1 on to remove.
The Anxious Middle.
Most high performers live in what is called the anxious middle.
They are not fully on - because when they are working, their attention is split between various tasks, and the mental residue left over from the previous ones eats away at them.
And they are never fully off - because they don’t create a ‘hard stop’ or know how to close their open loops.
As a result, they feel overwhelmed, burnt out, and at times, aimless. Despite having the results on paper showing them that what they’re doing is working.
And that’s where it gets troubling because they experience the results of the work, not the process they’ve built up around it, and they conflate the two.
So they continue living this way, thinking that’s just the trade-off that is necessary.
But the more I speak with truly elite performers, the more I am learning that this way of being doesn’t scale.
The highest performers I know, the ones doing millions in their business, the ones with the healthy family unit, the ones with the most peace, know how to toggle between being on and off.
Like anything, it’s a skill that they’ve trained.
I’m lucky enough to have been given these secrets, and I want to share them with you here, so you, too, can escape the anxious middle.
Quick pattern interrupt:
Every few months I open up select spots for entreprenerus to work with me 1:1. To help with the removal of subconscious blocks, refining your daily rhythm, and increase the quality of your output.
Because inner state always comes before outer mastery.
Inside our time together I share with you the secrets, frameworks and mental models to help you ascend to the next level.
How do I know? I've worked with a number of entrepreneurs who are living proof of the mechanism.
Like Reuben who scaled to 500k/m addressing his mental blocks and regaining his time through simple tweaks in his routine.
Or Emily who took grew her lip blush business to 7 figures through careful identity reconsctruction with me.
Or Elizabeth who went from the fear of being seen to closing the vision to execution gap on her breathwork business and working with olympic level athletes.
I've opened 2 spots to work with me to do the same for you. Book a call to see if you are a right fit, and at the very least you'll walk away with a strategy to implement right away.
>> Apply Here
How to be fully “On”
Being on is a matter of focus.
Focus is just your ability to sustain attention on any given thing.
And those who know how to be fully on have sharpened their focus like a sword, so they can cut through anything that will try to pull them away from their task.
In simple terms, when you are “on”, all of your attention and energy should be focused on the task ahead of you.
Nothing else. I don’t care what you think you can do; humans cannot multitask effectively.
Whether it’s a gym session, a writing block, a meeting, or even spending time with someone, it is your duty to be fully present with it. That means, no phones, no other tabs open, a quiet environment, and a specific goal.
Ambiguity is the death of clarity. You have to get specific. Let me make this practical with an example - every morning I aim to write for at least 60 minutes.
If beforehand I have prepared:
- What I am writing about (with specificity)
- What time will I be writing, and how long for
- A timer I can use
- A prepared environment with nothing to derail my focus
Then the likelihood my focus wavers is close to zero. In that block of writing, I am fully on, and the chances are I will enter into flow state.
This doesn’t just apply to writing or business, even when I take meetings with my clients for example.
I ensure the outcome is clear, and when I speak with them, I am fully present so that the best ideas and insights can flow, because they deserve nothing less.
I’m not perfect, of course, I will fall short at times.
But generally, when you stop to take a look around, you’ll notice that most people are stuck in this loop of half on, half off.
Their minds are fractured in a hundred different ways, and as a result, the effectiveness of what they’re doing is little.
Look around in the gym today when you go, how many people are on their phones between sets, watching reels? How many are actually engaged with their workout?
When you go to dinner later, how many people have a screen present with them at the table?
Reality is always speaking to you through signs, symbols, nature, and people; it’s just whether you are present enough to notice it.
So to recap, being fully on comes down to 3 things:
- Specificity in the task at hand - get clear on what you are doing, pick one thing,
- Preparedness beforehand.
- Designing your environment to support you
2 hours of intentional, focused attention is worth more than 10 hours of scattered attention.
But now comes the harder part…
How to be fully “off”
As an entrepreneur, I am always working. Especially in my mind.
In fact, I have been working on this new software for the last few days, and because of the late nights, I have been designing and architecting in my sleep, haha.
It's bleeding into my dreams and affecting my quality of rest, my mornings, and therefore my ability to be ‘on’ again.
I had to create some time this weekend to turn off to fix this cycle.
The primary issue I see in others, and I used to face myself, was this overwhelming feeling of guilt when I decided to do something other than work.
It hangs over you as if to say, ‘you’re not moving fast enough, you’re falling behind.’
But something I had to understand was that if I was working out of guilt, fear and scarcity, I was never going to feel like I was moving forward.
It would be like trying to chase a horizon.
I knew the shift I had to make was reframing my relationship with guilt.
And to do that, I only had to understand that emotion is just energy in motion, and the energy you act with becomes infused in your work.
Sour roots will never produce sweet fruits - meaning, if my primary driver was guilt, fear and anxiety, I could never create my best results and the reality I desired.
So what was the shift? I only had to objectively look at the results I produced from the hours I spent at the screen out of guilt.
When I saw the quality in comparison to the hours I was actually on, it was clear as day.
Once that clicked, I never felt guilty for being off again.
Because I understood it was a crucial step in the cycle that would increase the quality of my outputs.
Even though it might not feel like it in the moment.
People think that work and rest are unrelated, but that is so far from the truth. They are tightly knit together, and if you don’t recognise this, you will stunt your growth.
Recreation, as I mentioned earlier, can be broken down into re-creation.
The ‘off’ time is meant to re-create your body, mind and spirit back into their optimal form.
You have to remove the programming you were indoctrinated with from hustle culture, telling you that 18-hour days are a badge of honour.
If you were to truly measure the quality of work of those you see online, from those 18 hours.
You would quickly see it was a facade.
Be honest with yourself, the last time you avoided turning off. How much of what you completed was genuinely out of a flow state?
How much of it was just being at the screen because you’d feel guilty being away from it?
As soon as you are honest with yourself, you will begin to understand that you can only really work effectively in 3-4 hour blocks at a time.
I’m not saying that sometimes the 18-hour days are not required, because in the early stages of building anything, this will be the case.
I am saying over the long term, this isn’t a sustainable practice and won’t allow you to grow.
And so the best practices I have taken on for being fully off have been designing my rest like a ritual.
In the same way I prepare for the hours I am “on”, I prepare for the hours I will be “off”.
It’s important to realise being off doesn't look like: doomscrolling or binge-watching. The whole purpose of being off is to restore your energy.
So you have to find the activities that replenish you mentally, physically and spiritually. For me, it might be:
Walks
Reading powerful ideas
Movement or Meditation
Football/Tennis
Dinners with people I care about.
In The Creative Act, Rick Rubin argues that when you reach an impasse in the creative process, stepping away from the project creates space for solutions to appear.
When you hold a problem lightly in the back of your mind while doing something simple and unrelated, like driving, walking, swimming, or washing dishes, you are using ‘distraction’’ or being “off” not as procrastination but a deliberate strategy in service of the work…
Because these activities keep one part of your mind occupied while freeing the rest to remain open to whatever comes in.
And oftentimes, problem-solving and growth are about accessing a different part of your mind that can see more angles than the direct path.
Kind of like when you repeat a mantra during a meditation, it keeps one part of your mind ‘distracted’ so the other part can remain still.
I say all of this to tell you, despite what you see online, rest isn't the absence of productivity; it’s part of the cycle that produces your best work.
Don’t be fooled by what you see online, growth is not about grinding the longest or hardest.
The highest performers are not mastering their time, but their energy.
Because the truth is, your time means nothing if the energy behind it is depleted, scattered, or misaligned.
Everything in this universe follows a rhythm. And your self-mastery is about tuning in with it to find yours…a rhythm is a melody, it isn’t forced, it flows.
Flow is about finding a pattern of intense, intentional work followed by intentional rest; this is what truly creates quantum leaps in your life and business.
The silent cost of optimising every waking second is losing sight of this.
It’s ironic because you strive for perfecting your human form through optimisation, and as a result, you lose the very thing that makes you human.
You try to become conscious of your habits, but end up living unconsciously bound to a routine.
Should you follow a structure and routine? Of course. But the moment it becomes overbearing, learn how to loosen the grip a little.
Should you strive for optimisation? Sure. But know where to draw the line.
Nature has the answers already - as I said in the beginning, work like a lion instead.
The next time you find yourself filling every gap in your schedule, remember that the secrets of the universe and nature were hiding in the branches of a tree for thousands of years, before anyone noticed.
DaVinci found it because he gave himself the space to look.
Leave the gaps, because the idea that changes everything for you probably won't arrive when you're worrying about your sleep score.
It'll arrive when you're sitting under a tree with nothing better to do than wonder why it's shaped the way it is.
Your most important work might not look like work at all.
Until next time,
Milan
P.S - I've opened 2 spots to work with me directly. Book a call to see if you are a right fit, and at the very least you'll walk away with a strategy to implement right away.
>> Apply Here
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