#9 - Optimise Your Life For What YOU Want
Sounds like a really obvious and boring concept.
“Obviously I’m optimising my life for things I want… Or things I want to do”.
But have you ever actually stopped and seriously thought about whether that’s actually the case.
Specifically optimising for YOU.
Optimising life and lifestyle for what you enjoy and do on a day to day / week to week basis. Not in some wishy-washy way, but in an actual structured way that either improves your life daily, or reduces friction of your day to day (and hence improves your life).
Here’s a couple of my personal examples.
I value health and fitness extremely highly, I’m also kind of lazy (counter-intuitive I know). But what this means is I want to go to the gym everyday, for all the physical and mental benefits, but I don’t want to create any friction that makes this difficult to do.
So my optimisation for this is the following - Every house I live in has to be less than 10 minutes walk to 1 really good (and ideally 2+) gyms.
These gyms also have to be both really good but also have good vibes, ideally not a soulless commercial gym if I’m going to be going there everyday.
Another reason for this is because I work online and a strong gym community acts nicely to meet more people and connect with individuals in your city.
Currently, I live 7 minutes walk from my gym, it’s perfect.
Another example is coffee and coffee shops.
I love really good coffee and I also enjoy working from coffee shops most days, rather than co-working or office space, or from home every single day .
As a result, again, being very close to multiple good coffee shops is a must for me. Ideally within 10-15 minutes walk of 5+.
This reduces friction massively, it’s something I value highly (comfortable, enjoyable workspace with good vibes) and it needs to not add hassle to get to (commuting to a coffee shop just feels wrong).
And again, currently, I live 8 minutes and 7 minutes away from 2 great ones. And about a 15 minutes radius from 10+ strong options.
For me, that’s perfect, for you it might be something else, maybe a 3 minute walk from a park because you have a dog, or within a 15 minute walk to your kid’s school, but understand what you are actually optimising for and what you don’t care about optimising for (that others do).
Negatives you don’t mind
There’s a really interesting concept that I first heard from Rory Sutherland.
The essence of it is; look at the negatives of a situation/project/event/structure - and list the ones that other people dislike but you don’t mind.
His primary example in this space is searching for a place to live. Because he’s an older, wiser British gent, there’s certain criteria that he doesn’t mind that others would want. Such as good schools in the area (his kids are adults now), next to a pub being bad (he likes a good drink so doesn’t mind this) and near a railway station (usually perceived as being super negative for people, but for him, as UK trains stop before mid-night and he says he loves trains and doesn’t go to sleep before midnight…. This actually works in his favour).
This is such a good frame of reference to look through.
You end up creating value based on other people’s negative associations.
Personally I wouldn’t want to live near a railway station or a pub, but the idea is whatever doesn’t really bother you but bothers others is usually a good place to increase your value vs price.
Food is another good example of this, both if you love eating out or if you really never do. Passions and hobbies can be another area to optimise towards.
Passions & Hobbies
I’ve never understood why people don’t optimise their life around their passions or hobbies, or even their work for that matter.
A friend of mine used to commute close to 90 mins EACH WAY to a job that paid a shitty salary that he also didn’t like.
The irony was he lived in a place he also didn’t like and was spending a ton of money on the commute as well…..
The solution(s) are not exactly rocket science.
He eventually moved to a place that was exactly a 4 minute walk to his work (instantly saving him 3 hours a day and around £300/month). That difference, he could then spend on a apartment in this nicer area.
That 3 hours per day can then be used to work on creating an edge mentality project and a digital asset to get out of the shitty job.
Travel is another good example
<Pre warning I did go off on one a bit>
In most countries if you are considering a 2 hour journey between cities you’ll have 3 or 4 options that all have pretty obvious pros and cons; coach, train, drive yourself etc.
Most of these have inverted time to cost ratios. Coaches are cheapest but take the longest, trains are more comfortable and quicker but more expensive etc.
But for me there’s better ways to decide and hence optimise from there based on your results.
Time / Cost - is pretty obvious, the amount of time it takes (including waiting around, walking to stations etc) divided by the cost of the journey in full.
Hassle Cost - hassle cost is how frustrating/boring/annoying/any negative part of the travel type.
Opportunity cost - what could you be doing instead.
To analyse these examples I’m just going to use Bristol to London (2 large UK cities about 2.20 hours drive apart depending on exacts).
Walk + Train (or 2) + Walk (depending on end/start location): Total travel time door to door: 3 hours. Total cost (train or 2): £100, can be more expensive depending on peak times etc etc.
Personally I don’t mind trains but if you are British you know the delays/busy-ness can get crazy so we’ll call this a medium.
From here do the time/cost/hassle cost for all types of travel. Here’s an idea of structure:
Train: 3 hours / £100 / medium hassle.
Coach: 3.5 hours / £15 / medium hassle.
Drive: 2.30 hours / £30? / medium-high hassle (parking/congestion charges etc).
Uber: 2 hours / £X? / low hassle.
Helicopter: 40 minutes / £ Alot / low hassle.
Opportunity Cost: What could you do with the difference of each and is it worth it FOR YOU at this moment.
The reason I put uber on this list is because for the saved time and reduced hassle, if you are not optimising your life for cost or affordability, this is usually the best option. “X” is the price you’ll need to calculate in your head.
On the flip side, if you are only concerned with price and affordability, make this your optimised angle and just know you’ve made the correct decision based on your current circumstances.
Personally I like to optimise for saved time, reduced hassle and specific opportunity cost in the moment/day.
For example, if I’m in north London and would need to take a 20 minute underground, followed by waiting around for a coach or train, followed by then waiting around for another train or walking from the station… And it’s the UK so it’s obviously raining… In that case the £X Uber figure is going to be a lot higher to remove all this hassle for me, and I can relax/read/work during that time (good opportunity cost).
Obviously you can analyse this based on your “hourly rate” - which is definitely not the BS version based around a salary but is your actual hourly worth, this is the same reason why queuing and post offices are not for me but that’s a rant for another day.
In short, your “Optimise for “X” variable” should actually be dynamic on a situational basis.
On a monthly or yearly one, optimising your positive habits, hobbies and interests and making it easy for you to progress on these is something I think a lot more people should look into.
Hopefully you enjoyed this Uber sales pitch.
Thanks for reading.
TLDR: Live near a gym, sell your car and use Uber.
Thomas.
P.S.
