What are you optimizing for?

[00:00:00] Well, hello! This is The Daily Five with Aurooba, that's me, where we reflect on creating our best lives a little bit every day. Here we go!

[00:00:15] I've been thinking about the idea of quality recently. The quality of what we do and the quality of how we do it. I've been talking to a lot of new people recently and settling into some new kinds of work. Well, new, but also not. And here's kind of a truth that I've been sitting with as I think about quality and have all these conversations.

[00:00:40] Quality is not always significantly quantifiable to matter. When we're aiming for quality, there's so many different kinds of good quality. In some situations, we are measuring for good quality, only so far as it creates the outcome we are looking for. Quality in some hidden area that won't cascade into a better outcome may not be important. Here, we are optimizing for a particular result, and if the cost of making it, say, 15 percent better is to spend 50 percent more time, you may decide that the quality of It is not worth it. That level may not be worth it. Now, it's possible, of course, that in the future you come across a situation where, had you spent that extra time to make it better by 15%, that extra cost would have evened out and paid for itself in time saved now.

[00:01:32] That comes back to the whole topic we chatted about in a previous episode about balancing the needs of the now with the needs of the future now.

[00:01:42] I've been looking into hair tools. Recently. There's this very expensive set of hair tools called the Airwrap by Dyson. And a little later, the company Shark came out with a competing product called the FlexStyle, which is nearly half the price, but seems nearly identical. So naturally, I've been watching a bunch of YouTube reviews, as one does, to try and understand the differences and make an informed choice.

[00:02:11] In almost every comparison review, people mention that the Dyson Airwrap feels a bit more sleek, and the finish of it is a higher quality, while the Shark FlexStyle feels a bit more like an average plastic housing. And it got me thinking about how it seems that Dyson optimized for a product that feels higher quality, while Shark optimized for function. So, I was prepared to buy the SharkFlex style because ultimately, to me, function matters more than anything else. If it works practically the same. Why would I fork out an extra 300 for the Airwrap?

[00:02:44] And then I watched a YouTube video that made me question my decision again. This one YouTuber pointed out how the controls on the Airwrap are near each other and designed to be controlled with one hand and without looking. Whereas on the Shark version, the controls sit far apart, utilize a more digital setup, and not only do you often have to use both hands to change settings, you have to look at it because there's no way to know what you chose just by the feel of it.

[00:03:11] Then, I watched another YouTube video that said the earwrap is much lighter than the FlexStyle, and I looked it up, and while it's not unmanageable, the difference is significant. In my work life, I would define these as paper cuts. And on this podcast, I've said on more than one occasion how annoying paper cuts are, and how they add up in a way that stacks up to an almost, um, ruinous situation over time.

[00:03:37] I have thick hair. It takes a good while to style my hair because there's so much of it, and because it's not thin, it needs a lot more heat, so a lot more time, than finer hair to style. I also get bored very easily and often watch or listen to something and prefer having a hand free to control my media device.

[00:03:54] I'm a person who does not style her hair very often because I find it to be a tedious, time consuming, and hard thing to do. The reason I'm looking into these wildly expensive hair tools is because I WANT to style my hair more often, and I am looking for a way to make that easier, so that I can do it more often and do it without dread because, frankly, dealing with my hair fills me with dread.

[00:04:17] So then the question becomes, once again, what am I optimizing for? Am I optimizing for price? Am I optimizing for a particular type of function? Am I optimizing for ease? Both tools will get me there, but the one I choose depends entirely on what matters more here. And while all of it matters, what's the ranking of each thing that matters?

[00:04:38] What am I optimizing for? So in your life, think about what are you optimizing for in the decisions that you make all the time.

[00:04:54] Thanks for listening. Same time tomorrow.