I had to stop optimizing everything before I could actually get more done

I used to spend a surprising amount of time trying to make my workflow more efficient.

If something took five minutes, I’d wonder if I could make it take two. If I repeated a task, I’d look for an automation. If an app felt slow, I’d search for a replacement.

It sounds productive.

Sometimes it was.

But eventually I realized I was optimizing things that didn’t really matter.

I could spend an hour building a better system for a task that only happened twice a month. I’d create shortcuts, templates, and automations for problems that weren’t actually causing me much pain.

The bigger lesson was that not everything needs to be optimized.

Now I try to look at frequency and impact first.

If something happens every day and wastes 20 minutes, it’s worth fixing.

If something happens once a month and takes five minutes, I’ll probably just do it.

That simple distinction has stopped me from adding a lot of unnecessary complexity to my workflow.

I also realized that a slightly imperfect process I understand is often better than a highly optimized process I have to constantly maintain.

How do you decide what’s actually worth optimizing?

Do you have a rule for when to automate, replace a tool, or simply accept that a task is just part of the work?