Why Trying to Optimize Your Time Is Making You Miserable

I've spent thousands of hours obsessing over time management systems trying to unlock the productivity secrets of the world's most effective people and it was always about adding more. Waking up at 5:00 a.m. Timing every second of my day, tracking everything in color-coded calendars. I read all the books, tried the tools, and tested the systems, but none of it solved my problem with time. The harder I worked, the further away I felt from the life I wanted.

It wasn't until I was forced to stop that I realized the irony. By trying to optimize my life, [music] I was actually making myself miserable. This video is sponsored by Squarespace. I'll share more about how they helped me build all my websites later. So, I've personally struggled so much with time management like my entire adult life, but it's gotten so much worse over the past few years and I think it's because of two things. First, we've

seen this rise in the advice economy like all these people, creators, influencers, smart people, dumb people telling us the things that we should be doing with our time. And my part of the problem I don't want to talk about. And then from the other side, I've also seen the complete evaporation of my own personal time as a business owner and now father of two kids. And so, it's really in that mismatch right there where I get

the most frustrated. Every day we get advice on social media about what we should be doing. If you want to be healthy and happy, you need to strength train four times a week, shop for, cook, and eat nutritious meals daily, consume 1 g of protein per pound of body weight, and megadose on creatine, meditate for 30 minutes, do 15 minutes of mobility and sleep for 8 hours not including the time it takes to fall asleep. Do

150 minutes of zone two training per week, read more books, and make sure you find time to connect with nature. Get a six-pack, improve your VO2 max, start a side hustle, let the sunlight hit your face first thing in the morning. And of course, you've got to maximize electrolytes and do something about peptides. I don't know, I heard it on a podcast once. Peptides? Peptides? Peptides. Learn about personal finance, keep up with the news, and don't

forget to finish the day with a 60-minute sauna cold plunge circuit. Not only that, but you also need to find time for normal life stuff, you know, making friends, traveling, answering emails, returning your packages to the post office, and having sex. I mean, where am I going to find those 3 minutes? This is the 24 hours you have in a day. This is the amount of stuff you're supposed to do in a given day. As you

can see, most of us have very little time to do the things we want to do in life, let alone all the things we're supposed to do. By the way, this is all very scientific. So, as a father of two children under 3 years old, I have been thinking about this nonstop. Like it's all I think about. Like I used to think I was good at self-development, but it turns out I just didn't have kids yet.

Even doing basic things like working out, reading for enjoyment, and drinking eight glasses of water sometimes feels impossible. Nope. Frankie, don't touch that. So, naturally, I started to use the time I didn't have to think about this problem. How do we manage our time in a way that allows us to do [music] everything we want? There are, of course, practical things you can do. Find a less demanding job, choose the right partner, [music] hire help, or

reduce your commute. According to Nobel Prize winning behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman, for many people commuting is the worst part of the day and policies that can make commuting shorter and more convenient would be a straightforward way to reduce minor but widespread suffering. >> [screaming] >> ON TOP OF THESE BIG DECISIONS, THERE'S an endless list of productivity advice out there. [music] Many that I've tried, tested, and shared on this channel. Things like batching tasks, the Eisenhower Matrix,

the Pomodoro Technique, and bullet journaling. And you like, yeah, all of those things are really helpful and they do make a difference. I've noticed that myself. But even after having applied a lot of these systems and strategies, even being able to run my own business, have no commute, and have a pretty solid support system, I find myself insanely frustrated with my inability to get the things done that I set out to. And so, I've come to

the realization that the problem isn't me. It's not that I'm not implementing the right systems or I haven't done the right things in terms of setting up a life um where I can fit everything in. The reality is that there's just not enough time to do everything that I want to do. And if I can truly accept that reality, then I'm left with a very simple question. It's a difficult question, but it's really simple. What am

I willing to say no to? Oliver Burkeman, author of 4,000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, makes the argument that the real problem isn't that we're bad at managing our time, but that we're trying to fit too many things into a life that's already very short. As the title of the book gives away, most people have just 4,000 weeks on Earth. Most watching this video have already used up 30 to 40% of it. Our time here on

Earth is limited and so, we have to be very careful about the things we commit [music] to. As Burkeman writes, the more you believe you might succeed in fitting everything in, the more commitments you naturally take on and the less you feel the need to ask whether each new commitment is truly worth a portion of your time. And so, your days inevitably fill with more activities [music] you don't especially value. As the advice economy and self-development

have taken off over the past few years, so has another trend, an obsession with optimization. Optimized skin care routines, optimized productivity systems, optimized health care routines, and of course, because you're adding so much to your life, you also need to optimize your time management techniques. Everything needs to be optimized down to the 1%. If you're anything like me, you bought into this because you want to improve your life. And yeah, while a lot of this stuff

seems like doing a 1-hour sauna cold plunge circuit every day does feel really good and would be amazing if you could implement it every day. But I think the thing that's rarely talked about in these circles is just how unrealistic it is for most people to fit a fraction of this stuff [music] into their life or the fact that even trying to do so is the root cause of a lot of their misery. So, I became

a parent 3 years ago and I've learned firsthand that there are so many more things you can say no to in life. And so, I want to give you a quick look at my average weekly schedule to show you where all my time currently goes. So, this chart represents a week in my life. Each block is equal to 1 hour. Let's start with family time. So, I've got a 3-hour block at the beginning and end of

each day to spend time with family including the entire weekend. These days I usually put in 8 hours of work per day. I do my best to give myself 9 hours in bed per night. This accounts for the time it takes to fall asleep as well as our kids wake-ups which usually happens at approximately 12:00 a.m., 2:00 a.m., and 4:00 a.m. every night. And that leaves me with a grand total of 1 hour of personal time

per day. 1 hour. And that's if everything goes perfectly, I never run into traffic, and no one gets sick which pretty much never happens. I have spent so much time looking at this schedule just asking myself like, how am I possibly going to fit all the things that I want to and feel like I need to do for myself into this? How am I going to find time to read, to do cardio, to lift weights? James

Clear, the bestselling author and habit expert, opened up about his struggles becoming a parent and in the process made it very clear why I had been having such a difficult time. Usually when your seasons [music] change, your habits need to change. And that was fairly obvious to me when it comes to habits that were like a waste of time. Oh, okay, now I don't have as much time to watch TV or to browse YouTube or check

email or things like that. But it was much harder for me to realize that and it probably took me like a year and a half to give up some of the things that previously benefited me. They were like really good habits in my old season, but they're just not a good fit for the current season. I think this really gets to the core friction that I've experienced and I know so many other people have as well.

It's not saying no to the things that are bad for us that's difficult. It's usually the things that are good for us that we have to say no to that are the most painful. So, saying no to the things that give us fulfillment, that make us feel grounded, but being able to accept those hard no's, I think is one of the keys to finding inner peace. This video is sponsored by Squarespace. I've been using Squarespace for

over 15 years, much longer than they've been a sponsor on my channel. And the reason why I choose to use them to build my websites and why I recommend them to all my creator friends is very simple. They make publishing websites incredibly easy. From getting your domain name to designing and developing your website, you don't have to know anything about code, development, or design to get started. And that's really good because I am terrible at all

of those things. What I really like is that if you want to, you can keep things incredibly simple. You can use a template, you can use their blueprint AI tool to whip up a website pretty quickly. Or if you're somebody like me who's a little bit more pixel perfect, you can work with a designer or a developer to put together a website that really matches your creative vision. And then later on when I want to make

changes, when I want to tweak things, I can jump in and do that myself. That has made a huge difference for me as someone who's largely [music] a solo creator that works with freelancers. And of course, with Squarespace, it's not just about publishing a website. There are so many other tools that are really handy as a creator from building an online store to growing an email newsletter, booking consulting [music] gigs, tracking analytics, and so much more.

If you are looking to get started, build your own website, I've got a code. Go to squarespace.com to start your free trial and when you're ready to launch, go to squarespace.com/mattdavella to get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Thanks so much for considering. There was a long stretch during the first year of parenting when I just couldn't accept what I had to say no to. I had to give up on so many

things that had previously been good for me, but I didn't want to. I didn't want to make less videos on this channel. I didn't want to spend less time working on side projects. I didn't want to have less time to meditate, to work on the weekends to meet a deadline. And I really didn't want to stop working out 5 days a week, making healthy meals, and having hours of connection time with my wife. So, for a

very long time, I felt a lot of frustration and resentment because I felt like I was being forced to say no to these things against my will. And I think that these feelings were completely normal and valid. But, eventually I realized that they weren't helping me grow, they weren't helping me solve my problems, or to make my life any better. They were just making me be a miserable person to be around. I had to accept that

I chose this life, that these are the trade-offs of the decision that I made to have kids. These days, I often have to say no to my work and even to my own health, but I've said yes to something so much more important. The most meaningful moments in my life, the joy of giggling and playing around with my kids for hours on end, being one of the two people in the world that my son calls out

for [music] when he's scared, more meaning than I think I ever would have found otherwise. Sure, other things still matter in my life, but nothing matters [music] quite as much as this. And I know that I've spent a lot of time here talking about my experience raising kids. And while very few time commitments come close [music] to parenting, when I look back at my life before kids, I still see a person that struggled to manage their

time, to [music] fit it all in, to follow all the great advice that I heard. So, whether you're a parent, have a demanding job, you've got a crazy class schedule, or you just feel busy all the time, the lesson I've learned, and the one that I'm honestly still learning, is that when you find the things that are truly worth saying yes [music] to, it means saying no to almost everything else, and not being bitter about it.

[music] Once I was able to really accept that I couldn't do everything, test out every new self-development routine, or spend 1 hour a day baking in the sauna, I'm still pretty upset about that one, I began the process of un-optimizing my life. If I was lucky to have 1 to 2 hours of free time, how would I spend it? And for me, that usually means I'm lifting a couple times a week, I've got about three sessions

of high-intensity cardio per week, I fit in 10 minutes of meditation here and there when I can. And actually, some of my favorite things to do with my personal free time, watch baseball highlights or reality TV with Nat, or to do nothing productive at all. This is definitely not optimal, but when I stopped chasing the 1% gains, I started to be much more content, much more happy with what I have. And honestly, if I had time

to do more, I think it would just make each thing I choose to do a little bit less meaningful. Thanks so much for watching.