When Optimization is Suboptimal

There’s this insidious trend in the personal finance/self-help spaces that drives me crazy. It’s the idea that we need to optimize every aspect of our lives, hustle hard to get ahead, and hack inefficiencies like we’re machines. Now don’t get me wrong, I love a good productivity hack as much as the next person, but I think this line of thinking can also be dangerous.

Dangerous because it implies that if you aren’t optimizing everything, that you’re slacking. You aren’t trying hard enough, and that’s the reason you can’t get ahead. Well, I’m calling bullshit.

This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Read more about my affiliate philosophy here.

I struggle with depression and anxiety. And when I have things that have to get done, I’m pretty good at going through the motions of being a regular human being. Cooking food, taking showers, and if I’m overachieving, doing laundry and vacuuming on a regular schedule. But at a certain point, I hit a wall, where everything I’ve been repressing—tamping down in the name of productivity—boils up and can’t be ignored.

The past few months have been really rough. Between an insane number of job interviews last fall, to quite a bit of soul-searching and existential uncertainty that led me to my new career path (which I’m thrilled about), there’s been a lot going on. And it’s not all bad, but it is all mentally exhausting. When I had concrete deadlines that had to be met, I just shoved that feeling of impending doom down deep and powered through. A couple of weeks ago though, I couldn’t do that anymore.

You know how when you’re in school, it seems like you always get a cold or the flu right after finals? Or during spring break? Your body is hopped up on adrenaline, but as soon as the stress is gone, it crashes (I’m not a doctor. No clue what kind of evidence bears that out, but it’s definitely my anecdotal experience). I got the equivalent of a mental flu when my deadlines disappeared.

The Past Few Months

In early February, I took and passed the Series 65 exam, so I’m now able to start building my business as a financial planner. I went straight into a week of high-level work meetings immediately after taking the exam—a week of 14-hour days and presentations and discussions with board members. And when it was all over? I crashed. Because while I have goals I’m working toward, I don’t have more impending deadlines, so my body and brain could afford to crash.

And this is where the church of optimization gets it wrong. You can only power through and increase productivity for so long before you need a break. Now, that point comes at different times for everyone. I’m a huge fan of the Spoon Theory when talking about mental illness. While the “theory” came out of the author’s attempt to explain the effects of chronic illness, I think it translates nicely to mental health as well. I only have a certain number of spoons to share, to get me through the day, and my number might be less than yours. Heck, some days I don’t have to count my spoons at all, and other days I have to hoard them carefully. And this bears out in my life; when I’m depressed, it’s a big deal that I took a shower and walked the dog. It means I didn’t have the energy to wash all my dishes. That doesn’t mean I should push through and suck it up when my spoons are gone; it means I should treat myself kindly and do what I need to in order to recharge—to replenish my spoons.

Getting Help

So I did. First, I talked to my doctor. I’ve been dealing with this depression and burnout for months, and now that I know I’m not going to be moving immediately for a new job, I don’t see it going away on its own any time soon. To manage that, I’m changing the doses on my medication, and I’m really hopeful that I’ll see that effect soon. I’m ready to feel normal again.

My doctor also recommended that I start taking Vitamin D and using a sunlight therapy lamp. While this depression wasn’t caused by Seasonal Affective Disorder (it started well before winter), the short days and dreary weather definitely don’t help. In case you’re interested in trying either of these, I will say that she recommended Vitamin D supplements between 1,000-2,000 IUs and a sun therapy light of at least 10,000 lumens. The links above are the ones I purchased.

Or should I say, my mom purchased…she felt very vindicated after my doctor told me to do exactly what she had recommended over a week prior. The moral of this story: moms are usually right. Thanks, Mom!

Taking Time

But that wasn’t all I did. I knew that if I wanted to get better and back to normal, I had to take a break. Which is something I haven’t done in quite a while; my vacations tend to be fast-paced travel, or hectic holidays spent with family. I haven’t really spent any solid period of time alone relaxing since 2014. Which is ridiculous.

I talked to my boss. I told him I needed a week of sick leave. And it was terrifying. But as soon as I said it, and he reacted supportively, I knew that it was the right choice. I knew it was exactly what I needed.

My week off was last week. It was perfect. I didn’t even put out a blog post (not that I haven’t been known to miss a week here or there in the past anyway). I knew I didn’t want the week to be a black hole of sleeping, so I set some basic guidelines. But other than those, I just did what I wanted at the time. I watched some TV and read some books. I did lots of baking and cooking, and spent some time with friends.

The Guidelines

Here are those guidelines:

• No reading fiction books. Mainly because when I start a good book, I fall down a rabbit hole and emerge 6 hours later. I didn’t want to lose my entire week to reading. I don’t have that same problem with non-fiction…
• Wake up by 8 am. I also didn’t want to lose days to lounging in bed until noon, which feels good at the time but then makes me feel shitty for the rest of the day. However, as long as I woke up on time, I was allowed to take naps. Naps are gold.
• Go to sleep by 10pm. I didn’t want to completely throw off my sleep schedule and make returning to work even harder.
• At least 30 minutes of exercise a day. I didn’t want to spend the whole week on my couch. While I had initially planned on hiking in nearby parks for this exercise, at the time, I didn’t really want to drive anywhere. StarDog and I took lots of nice walks in my area, and it was lovely.

And most important, I completely disconnected from work. Which I haven’t done since I started my job four and a half years ago. I stopped forwarding my office phone to my cell, and I turned off all email notifications on my laptop and phone. To put that in perspective, I’ve responded to work emails in the African wilderness while on safari. I have never not checked email at least every couple of days. It was surprisingly freeing to not have that icon in the corner of my Outlook app, and to not worry about what was happening in the office. I made it clear in my Out of Office message that I wouldn’t be reachable. And I kept to that.

It’s amazing how much of a reflex checking email becomes. There were several points when I unlocked my phone and out of habit reached for the work email app. I had to stop myself from opening it. At one point, I actually did open it. As it started to load all of the emails, taking longer than normal (which was terrifying), I realized I didn’t care. And that I was happier having this week be completely separate. So I closed the app back down before it could download anything.

I decided to check my email Sunday afternoon, only so I would know what was coming back in the office Monday. Turns out, there were no major disasters or fires to handle. All time sensitive requests were easily addressed by someone else. I didn’t even get pushback for the absence (which I was pessimistically braced for).

Back to the Real World

I’m back at work this week. My week off by no means fixed everything; I’m still tired and can having trouble staying motivated. But now my boss knows what’s going on, so if I need to change things up down the line, I can. I’ve been running the math and could afford to drop down to 30 hours a week if I need to. Whether or not I take that option, it’s such a relief to know I could. That I have an escape hatch that isn’t completely abandoning my full-time, stable job with benefits.

The point of all this is that I think it’s irresponsible when influencers in the self-improvement space only advocate for doing more, for increasing your productivity and your effort, for maximizing every minute of your day. People aren’t machines. And if I treat myself like one, I will most definitely break down. Fixing that sort of breakdown is a hell of a lot harder than taking your car to the mechanic.

---

So give yourself some space. Some leeway to slow down and breathe. Some permission to rest. Maybe the optimization argument is incomplete; we do need to optimize our lives, but that includes optimizing the way we rest and recharge. It includes optimizing taking down time. I plan to do more of that going forward—to draw clearer lines between my work time and personal time, to build in intentional breaks where I focus on rejuvenating activities. That kind of self-care is necessary to being our best and creating sustainable lives.