Three hours.
That was all we had.
My son was at a friend’s house, my husband and I were both free, and neither of us had anywhere we needed to be. A rare and beautiful little pocket of time alone together!
So, naturally, my brain got busy figuring out how to make the most of it.
We had a whole list of possibilities. We could go for a walk. We could watch a movie. We could run an errand. We could build LEGOs.
But once my mind got involved, three hours stopped feeling like three hours of freedom and started looking like a puzzle to solve.
The walk seemed like a particularly good option. The place we wanted to walk was close to where we needed to pick up our son, so surely we could time it just right. We could finish the walk, get in the car, and head straight to pick him up. No extra driving. No wasted time. Maximum efficiency.
It sounded completely logical.
Except the time we were spending trying to optimize our three hours was eating into the three hours we actually had! 😅
At some point, we realized what we were doing and laughed. As a wise friend of mine likes to say, we were trying to create a map with the mind instead of following the compass of the heart.
We were optimizing our time so thoroughly that we were no longer enjoying it.
And that got me thinking about how often this happens...
Our brains are incredibly good at optimization. They look for patterns, shortcuts, familiar pathways, ways to conserve resources and make things more efficient. And that’s useful. We need our brains to do this.
But sometimes the very thing that’s designed to make life easier ends up clogging up the works.
Because the mind isn't the only player in this game of being human.
It’s the one we're taught to go to most often. It’s loud, familiar, and readily accessible. But we’re operating within a much larger system that includes the body, the heart, intuition, spirit, nature, and all sorts of ways of knowing that don't necessarily come with a logical explanation or an efficient plan.
When we're constantly trying to optimize, manage resources, maximize our time, and make everything productive, we're looking at our lives through a very narrow lens.
Sometimes that lens is useful, but it isn't the whole picture.
I'm saying this as a reminder to myself as much as anything else, but if it's helpful to you too, great:
Sometimes the most optimal thing to do is to stop optimizing.
Sometimes the best thing to do is the least productive, the least efficient, the least logical (or something in between).
Make a little more room for the heart to lead. Listen to your body. Give your intuition a little more say. Notice what’s happening around you. That guidance is there. It just isn't usually as dramatic or attention grabbing as the mind.
We don't need to stop using the mind; we just need to give it a little breather.