Don't Over-optimize Your Life: Glenn Murphy on PYP 512
Channel: Sick to Fit | Plant Yourself Podcast
Date: 2022-04-19

Addendum: I misspelled "imperturbability" in the video header. So now everyone can stare at my typo for 63 minutes. I'm resisting fixing it, as part of a practice of not needing everything to be perfect. I hope the typo bothers you less than it bothers me. 

Here's my dream morning:

Wake up at 4am and pour a bucket of ice water over my head. Meditate for 30 minutes. Do 45 minutes of yoga. 30 minutes of breathing and muscle tension/relaxation exercises. As the sun rises, go for a 6 mile run, including hill intervals. Do 20 minutes of PT for my back. Lift weights for 20 minutes. Shower. Do 45 minutes of eye exercises. Write for 4 hours. Call three of my friends and tell them how much they mean to me. Write for 45 minutes in my gratitude journal. Spend 10 minutes planning my day to incorporate my priorities and move my goals forward. 

Have breakfast.

Are we exhausted yet? I haven't even covered half of the things that I "should" do every day to make me into the person I want to be.

Today's returning podcast guest, Glenn Murphy, is no stranger to self-improvement. A martial arts instructor, prolific author, entrepreneur, and master of stressproofing, Glenn knows all the ways we can spend time optimizing our days and lives. 

Between us, we've read all the books: Atomic Habits, Essentialism, Indistractable, Mindset, Deep Work, The Compound Effect, The Miracle Morning, Eat That Frog, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and so many more.

And through the last two years of pandemic and political and social and economic and environmental and psychological upheaval, we've both been buoyed and undermined by our daily optimization routines. 

In this deeply personal conversation, we kick around Glenn's contention that it's possible - and dangerously appealing - to over-optimize our hours and days at the expense of a happy, balanced experience of life. 

Rather than trying to make ourselves bulletproof and indistractable, he argues, we need to take time to look at the bigger picture: what do we actually want to do with all that productivity.

As he wryly notes, nobody wants their headstone to read, "He 10x'ed his life."

Instead, we want meaning, joy, love, purpose, and ease.

So how to we balance the good habits and routines - the ones that support us in being our best selves - with the marketplace of "productivity porn" that needs us to consume one self-improvement book after another in an infinite race again our own limits?

Partly, by relentlessly asking a variation of a simple question: "To what end?"

And partly, by giving up on the myth of indistractability and embracing a much larger way of being: the ability to be imperturbable even in the face of distraction. 

That requires more than tactics for maintaining laser-focused attention. To be imperturbable is a spiritual, physical, psychological, and mental state. It requires ongoing nurturing, as much through self-compassion as self-discipline. 

It requires noticing our assumptions and questioning them bravely and ruthlessly. 

As Glenn says, optimization never ends. There's always more to do. More to cram into my morning. More to achieve. More to improve. The question is, optimization to what end?

Or as Mary Oliver memorably put it:

"Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"