The Luxury Of Not Optimising Everything
At some point, many of us begin asking a different question about the things we do.
Not:
“Do I enjoy this?”
But:
“What is this doing for me?”
The question sounds reasonable.
In many situations, it is.
We want our time to be well spent.
We want our efforts to matter.
We want to make good use of the days we have.
The trouble is that the question has a habit of spreading.
Eventually, it begins appearing in places where it was never needed.
A walk becomes exercise.
Reading becomes self-improvement.
Travel becomes personal growth.
A hobby becomes a side business.
Dinner becomes networking.
Rest becomes recovery.
Before long, experiences that once existed for their own sake begin carrying the burden of producing something.
A result.
A lesson.
An outcome.
A return on investment.
None of this happens intentionally.
In fact, most of it comes from good instincts.
We are encouraged to be thoughtful with our time.
To make the most of opportunities.
To improve ourselves where we can.
The problem is not optimisation itself.
The problem is that usefulness quietly becomes the standard by which everything is judged.
And not everything valuable is useful in that way.
Consider a conversation with an old friend.
At the end of it, nothing may have changed.
No problem was solved.
No decision was made.
No objective was achieved.
Yet it can still feel deeply worthwhile.
Or consider a book that teaches us nothing practical.
A walk that leads nowhere.
An afternoon spent wandering through a new city without a plan.
These experiences often resist measurement.
Which may be precisely why they matter.
They remind us that value and usefulness are not always the same thing.
Some things enrich our lives without improving them.
Some things matter without advancing us.
Some things deserve a place in our lives without needing to justify their existence.
Children seem to understand this instinctively.
A child can spend an hour building something in the sand, collecting leaves, watching clouds move across the sky or inventing a game that serves no purpose at all.
The activity does not need to lead anywhere.
The experience itself is enough.
Many adults slowly lose comfort with that idea.
We begin looking for outcomes.
For benefits.
For evidence that our time was well spent.
And while there is nothing wrong with wanting purpose, life becomes surprisingly narrow when every experience must prove its worth.
Because some of the best parts of life are difficult to defend on paper.
A long conversation.
A favourite song played again for no reason.
A slow morning.
A book read simply because it was enjoyable.
None of these are particularly efficient.
That is part of their appeal.
Perhaps this is one of the quieter luxuries available to us as adults.
The ability to do something without turning it into a project.
Without measuring it.
Without improving it.
Without needing it to become something else.
We have become very good at asking what something is for.
Perhaps we have become less comfortable with the idea that some experiences justify themselves.
Not everything valuable needs to become useful.
And remembering that may be more important than it first appears.
