Over-optimisation Is The Thief of Joy

I’ve been thinking about how we all seem to have become obsessed with optimising our lives to such a silly degree that it often robs us of the simple joy that the little things can bring us. I used to do it all the time until I made some changes

The reason I don’t use linux on a PC/laptop anymore is because I kept trying to optimise the experience, I’m now a Mac guy where I just use my laptop. Same thing with my Android to iOS transition.

I used to stress out about having the best possible headphones, speakers, DAC, amp etc for listening to music that I kind of forgot the joy. I don’t do any of that anymore. Now I just have my affordable headphones and DAC for that kind of listening and I use the analogue input on my basic Denon to use the speakers it came with for my turntable. I don’t stress out that my living room is completely untreated for sound quality (seriously, audiophiles would hate my living room). I just put on a CD or a record and enjoy it.

The reason I moved back to console gaming from PC gaming is because I had a tendency to over optimise to eke out more frames and better image quality and it ultimately hurt my enjoyment of the games. I even lock my Switch 2 to 1080p while docked to my TV and it hasn’t harmed my enjoyment of games one bit. I’ve never actually enjoyed games more than I do now.

I’m not saying all optimisation of our lives is bad, just that there is a time and place (work/business activities for example), and maybe hobbies are not the time or place.