You Can't Optimize Everything

Create your minimal viable system

Have you ever been up late adjusting the final touches on your productivity system of your dreams? What about organizing your closet, so everything is within perfect reach? Maybe you are the person that likes to get your creative project just right.

I have been in this situation more than one time, in more than one context. I work with clients whose main goal for our engagement is to optimize their workflows. But recently, I have been seeing things from the other side. Do you really need to optimize everything? Can you work with a system, be it productivity or organizational, that is just enough? I call this idea the minimal viable system (MVS).

Since the dawn of consumer-grade computers, we have been finding ways to optimize them to increase our outputs, save us time, and make us more efficient. While that is the purpose of them, in the age of AI and automations, I feel like it's going a bit too far.

We are rarely satisfied with the system once we have it in place. We find something to tweak, something to perfect. It worked for us last week, but this week we see an improvement. We then spend hours adjusting something that will save us seconds a day, maybe minutes a week. You get into a game of optimization olympics — with no finish line, no metaphorical ceiling.

There are a few tools and online communities that do this more than most. Some common tools that breed this are Notion, Obsidian, Tana, and Craft. We have all seen that person that shares their ultimate setup. After they are done building and sharing it, does it really increase their productivity x times?

While I use a few of those tools and I am a Notion Certified Consultant, I see the dark side of them too. They provide limitless possibilities and no guardrails. While this is a selling feature, it is also the problem. So how can we use these limitless tools, see value in them, but not tweak them more than use them?

As mentioned earlier, my solution is an MVS. An MVS can be in one tool, be a collection of tools (connected or not), or be a combination of tools and analog things. The medium is less important than the practices you deploy to maintain them. The foundational thing to implement is actually the lack of maintenance.

In the software development world, there is a term: minimal viable product (MVP). This is the most basic version of your product that can prove its value. This could be for investment, user testing, or proof of work for stakeholders. When it relates to the MVS, this is the best version of the system at that moment. Once you get to your MVS, the key is keeping it that way as long as you can.

Another software development analogy is the code freeze. At some point before deploying, the engineering team is told they are in code freeze. This essentially is the pencils-down moment in a standardized test. Regardless of what optimizations they can do, there is a point at which they are not allowed. If they could iterate forever, they would never ship a product. And this is the exact point of an MVS. If you are endlessly iterating on it, you will never get the real value of it.

Once you have your MVS in place — something you built or used an outside consultant for — you set an iteration freeze. This is your MVS. Not forever, but for a set time.

But how do you prevent yourself from changing the system, from asking your consultant to change one more thing, to turn on one more automation? Set constraints.

Lock your tools

If you are using digital tools, set restrictions by locking the interface. While not all tools offer this, some of the more malleable tools do. If they don't, you can also change permissions. If using a work-grade tool, set your permissions to editor-only — no admin-level abilities. Tools like Airtable have the paradigm of interfaces for this, but you can do this with any business tool. Just get your privileges lowered. If you limit your power, you're taking away the choice to make changes.

Define your code freeze

Define specific times of the year that you can edit your system. I recommend doing this no more than quarterly. Make a list or project that tracks all the issues you have with your system. When that time comes, go crazy. Iterate away. But only do this for a set period of time. This could be a day, a week, or a sprint if you want to really adopt the software analogies.

A system is only useful if you use it to its limits. By constantly changing them, it loses its usefulness. The concept of an MVS can be applied to more things than digital systems. It can be used for reorganizing your closet, rewiring your desk, or deep cleaning your home. If you don't want to follow the concept of quarters, because it feels too business or sterile, then think of it in seasons.

Your system should work for you; you shouldn't be constantly working on it. While some of us feel the need to optimize everything, the act of optimizing is usually anything but. By creating an MVS, you can have a system that works for you and get the time back to actually use it.