Some Optimization Is Good
…but sometimes it’s not so good
I walked to my car last night after work, pulled out my phone, and typed my home address into Google Maps.
It’s a drive I’ve made hundreds of times. Maybe even a thousand. I know all of the possible routes better than the back of my hand. Yet every day, I use the GPS because I hate traffic. Knowing where the traffic is heaviest helps to limit my commute time to the bare minimum.
That is optimization at its finest. It takes me twenty seconds to pull up the data and I’m on my way. Awesome.
But not all optimizations are that effective, especially given how much modern culture pushes for them. We reach for over-optimization more often than not. And who can blame us? Optimizations are very attractive, their allure quite difficult to resist.
At work, we’re applauded for them. At home, they buy us more precious free time.
The trick is in weighing the opportunity cost. Microsoft Excel is a good example here. At my first job after college, an old mentor taught me that if I could do something faster than I could automate it, then I should just do it. If the opposite is true, then I should spend the extra time automating it to make my life easier.
That simple advice has stuck with me. Many spreadsheets I use at work are…
