Optimizing a Life Means Suboptimizing Its Moments

There is a counterintuitive feature of systems optimization. You don't optimize a system by optimizing any one part of it. To optimize a system, you have to sub-optimize its parts. Let me illustrate by talking about a life.

Your life is a product of many things: your physical health, your mental life, your friendships and family, your sense of meaning, your connection to community, your sense of individuality within it,  your sense of legacy, your income and financial security, the pleasures of food and music and books and stories, the tribal urges that find expression in cheering for your team.

Here is the deal. If you optimize any one of these, you will sub-optimize the whole. Do everything you can to be in peak physical condition and you will have little energy left for great literature. Do both while working full-time and your social life will suffer. The hours in your week are zero-sum, and optimizing for any one piece sub-optimizes the rest. Oddly, the way to optimize any system, including and perhaps especially your life, is to sub-optimize every piece of it.

The punchline is familiar: a balanced life means moderation in all things.

Now the part that complicates this.

There is a familiar argument that to accomplish anything significant you need to work eighty hours a week. People point out, correctly, that an eighty-hour week is counterproductive. Long term, this is true. Short term, the original argument is right.

A balanced life is not something achieved in any given instant. You do not split each hour into seven minutes for workout, three minutes for great literature, eight minutes for relationships, four minutes for eating. Even within a day or a week, we focus on one thing at a time. So in any given instant, we are not balanced.

There are times in life when you need to move forward. In those instances you look for the limit or obstacle and you challenge it. You optimize to the part that is the limit, at least until it no longer is.

If you optimize a life but not any one part of it, what does it mean to sub-optimize in a way that is best for your life? It means you have stretches of life that really do optimize for one part and subordinate everything else. If you have children, you do not dedicate the rest of your life to optimizing for them. But in the first few months? First few years? The first decade or two? You often subordinate the other parts of your life to them. Nobody with a newborn is running marathons or throwing big parties or reading great literature. They are sub-optimizing everything to that new life.

If you write a dissertation or a symphony, build a business, pursue a gold medal, you will go through something similar. You will sub-optimize to that one thing for a few months or years. New parents do not put in forty hours a week for the newborn. It would die in the other eighty-eight. A similar but less dramatic version of this happens with any ambitious venture. Balance suggests you never dive in. Success suggests you do.

You may keep diving into things across your whole life. More realistically, the dives are separated by six months to six years of "la de dah," days when not much happens. (The perfect storm of incredible opportunity for which you are perfectly suited at exactly the right time of life happens once, twice, maybe three or four times in a lifetime. Know when that happens and dive into it.) You throw yourself into things that produce sub-optimization elsewhere. You are immoderately out of balance at every stage, and the end result is a full life that is balanced because it lets you experience life whole over the course of a whole life, but never in any one instant.

A life takes a lifetime. If you are interested in a legacy of any kind, you do not even optimize for a window as small as a lifetime. But that is the stuff of another post.

The Simple Trade Agreement that Helped Transform Two Countries Into a Shared Economy

After WWII, Europe transitioned from a model based on conquest and extraction to one based on trade and interdependence. You need coal and iron to make steel.

France’s steel industry relied heavily on the coal-rich Ruhr Valley in Germany, while Germany's heavy industry relied on the iron ore found in the Lorraine region of France.

Because neither country could effectively produce steel or build a modern, post-war industry without the resources of the other, they decided to merge their economic and production interests. It was a forced interdependence, almost like an arranged marriage.

The agreement to dependably formalize that trade, known as the the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), created in 1951, evolved into the EU. As it turns out, iron and coal are not the only exports / imports that go into creating a modern economy and the trade agreement that began with these simple but essential ingredients for modernity expanded to include thousands of other products and materials.

The two world wars were devastating for France and Germany.

France in WWI lost roughly 25% of all their men aged 18–30.
Germany in WWI lost about 13% to 15% of its entire mobilized military. In WWII, the destruction of the German military was even more complete; some historical estimates show that over 30% of all German males born between 1915 and 1924 were killed or went missing.

The arrangement made for trade and interdependence hasn't just made them far more prosperous, it has made France and Germany far more able to turn young men into old men rather than corpses. The last half of the twentieth century has seemed to support the notion that greater economic interdependence has made trading partners more peaceful and prosperous. 

Kyiv's 1,544th Birthday

Today, the city of Kyiv - Ukraine's capital - has turned 1,544 years old [per Olga Nesterova].

I suppose such a thing could change your perspective about how long you could hold out against a Russian invasion.

A New Kind of Hairdo

The barber was confused.

"You'd like a dome cut?" 

"No. Palindrome. I want my beard and hair cut and groomed to similar lengths so that I look the same coming or going." 

"So not a palin dome?" 

"I don't even know what that is." 

"Nor do I," sighed the barber. "Nor do I."

Harari and the Claim That The Whole of Human History is About Cooperation

 "The whole of human history is about, How do you get more people to cooperate and to trust each other? And you cannot do that only with brute force."

- Yuval Noah Harari on Ezra Klein podcast

Bull Market

Bullish and bull shit (excuse my language) sound quite similar in the conversation about market projections.

How You Ask Someone to Dance

The way my two and half year old granddaughter asked me to join her dancing. 

"Do you want to be dizzy like me?"

Scientific Ambiguity

The difference between them? Bob read a lot of science fiction. Carl read a lot of science nonfiction. Bob thought the difference between those two was mostly fictional. Carl thought the difference was real.

If Nvidia Were Priced Like a Few Other Tech Stocks

Nvidia is the world's most valuable company. If it were priced like comparable stocks, it would be worth even more.

As of this writing - Monday, 25 May 2026, the day the market is closed - NVDA price is $215.33.

If it were priced at the same forward as ...

Microsoft, with a Forward P/E of 21.6, it would be priced at $235.00,

Alphabet (GOOG), with a Forward P/E of 26.6, it would be priced at $289,

Amazon, with a forward P/E of 30, it would be priced at $324.

Nvidia price has gone up so much so quickly that it might just be lagging its real price. Which seems worth considering. 

A Very Simple Explanation for the Rise of Right-Wing, Populist Parties Across the West in Recent Decades

Until roughly the era of Reagan and Thatcher (the 1980s), the simplest predictor of whether you were rich, middle class, or poor was which country you lived in. The gaps between nations were enormous, and the gaps within the wealthy nations were relatively compressed. Globalization changed this. As trade and capital flowed more freely, the gaps between countries narrowed while the gaps within countries widened. The income disparities that had once shown up mainly between nations increasingly showed up within them. A class of relative losers emerged in the wealthy democracies, workers whose incomes stagnated even as the global economy grew.

This economic shift created the conditions for political backlash, but it did not by itself determine the form the backlash would take. The dissatisfaction could have been channeled toward redistribution, which is the traditional left-wing response to inequality. Instead, in most of the wealthy democracies, it was channeled toward nationalism and opposition to immigration, which are right-wing responses. The rightward direction was shaped by additional factors: the convergence of mainstream parties on support for globalization, which left the dissatisfied without mainstream representation; the shift of left-wing parties toward the educated professional class, which left the working class politically homeless; and the cultural dimension of the dissatisfaction, which the right addressed directly and the left, committed to cosmopolitan values, could not. The economic foundation produced the dissatisfaction. The political and cultural context determined that the dissatisfaction would find right-wing rather than left-wing expression.

On a Scale from Is This a Great Country to Or What?

11 years ago. Back when there was still reasonable doubt.

Nvidia's Phenomenal 2026 Growth

For the next fiscal year, Nvidia's projected revenue is more than $300 billion - a single year gain of more than $100 billion.

Nvidia Employees Net Worth

Informal report on Nvidia employees shared by Rick Munarriz  at Motley Fool ....

80% of Nvidia employees are worth at least a million dollars and 50% are worth more than $25 million.

There would be some fascinating insights to come from understanding how Nvidia retains employees whose salary no longer makes much difference to their wealth.

(And I'm sure there is a lag between when they "get" the stock options and when they can exercise them .... and yet ...)

Troops in the Middle East and Treasury Yields at 5.2%. It is Like 2007

In 2007, we had 170,000 troops in Iraq.
Now we have 50,000 troops in to the Middle East for the special operation in Iran.

In 2007, 30-Year Treasury Yields Reached 5.2%.
Now, 19 years later, they've hit that level again for the first time since.

In 2007, we got hit with our worst recession since the Great Depression.

Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress are focused on using their majority to get one billion in funding for Trump's ballroom, the one priority they are aligned on.

Hey Trump voters. Maybe your boy will save the last dance for you.

If You Want a Successful Organization, Draw Talent from Around the Globe

NBA, NHL, and MLB - professional basketball, hockey, and baseball in these United States - include a lot of foreign born players.


National Basketball Association (NBA)
The Status: Every single team has at least one international player. The Data: The NBA started its season with a record 135 international players representing 43 different countries. Even the least internationally diverse team in the league—the Dallas Mavericks—still carries two Canadian players and a center from Guinea on its roster.

Major League Baseball (MLB)
The Status: Every single franchise features international talent.
The Data: Roughly 26% to 28% of all Major League players on Opening Day active and inactive lists were born outside of the 50 United States.

National Hockey League (NHL)
The Status: Every team has multiple foreign-born players.
The Data: The NHL has the highest percentage of foreign-born players of any major American sports league. Because the league is a joint enterprise between Canada and the United States, and draws heavily from Europe, roughly 70% to 80% of all NHL players are born outside the U.S.

Bitcoin and Banksy

What if Satoshi Nakamoto and Banksy were the same secret organization, trying to convince us that crypto is money and graffiti is art? Turning random walls into art galleries and bits into currency.

Beginnings and Endings

Every beginning had its own beginning.

This is worth remembering especially when you think you've reached the end, because endings, too, are beginnings.

Ado

He said "without further ado" and then proceeded with what might better be described as "considerably more elaborate and convoluted ado." There was, in fact, no shortage of ado.

The Odyssey

The Odyssey is the story of Odysseus who was the sole survivor of a ten year voyage that killed off his original crew of 600 through a series of mishaps, tragedies and battles with gods and monsters.

The Odyssey is also one of the country's most popular minivans, a great choice for families.

One can't help but wonder about the personal traumas Honda's marketing team has experienced on family vacations.

California Connected - And Its Economy is Growing Fast

The larger the network you are part of, the more opportunities you have — to buy and sell, work and hire, entertain and be entertained, learn and teach, make friends and fall in love.

Few people move to the big city for the high-rises or the traffic. They move because other people are there. Each new arrival attracts more arrivals, and the possibilities expand with the population — not linearly, but exponentially.

This is true at every scale. The more connections between your brain cells, the better your brain works. The more connections between your household, your community, your state, and the wider world, the better your culture and economy work.

California's economy is larger than all but a handful of national economies. The reason is connection.

The United States is 13% immigrants. California is 26%. Silicon Valley is 39%.

Hollywood creates content the entire world watches. Silicon Valley creates the products and services that connect the world. It is the capital of the world wide web.

Californians are not harder working or smarter than other people. They are more connected. That is why theirs is the largest economy in the United States, and why it is growing faster than comparable advanced nations.

The Freedom 250 Initiative and Its Casual Disregard for Jesus and The Founding Fathers

Per Deep Mind:
"The Freedom 250 initiative and its "Rededicate 250" event, fronted by Pete Hegseth, promote their mission as a "national jubilee of prayer, praise, and thanksgiving" aimed at rededicating the United States as "One Nation under God". The organization, established by the White House, seeks to reframe the nation's 250th anniversary through a focus on Christian nationalism and the ideological assertion that America is an explicitly Christian nation."

I'm not suggesting that these people would crucify Jesus. I would suggest that they would deport him and denounce his socialist nonsense like the statement that "It will be as hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven as it is for camel to pass through the eye of a needle."

And of course the founding fathers made explicit that they - unlike the royalty of Europe - were not a Christian nation. In the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli, which was negotiated to secure peace with Muslim Barbary states, the United States explicitly stated it was not a Christian nation. Article 11 declared, "[T]he Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian Religion".

Treaty negotiations were initiated by George Washington and the treaty was approved by the U.S. Senate unanimously and signed by President John Adams in 1797. These were hardly controversial ideas among the founding fathers.

So, other than the fact that Hegseth and company don't know Jesus' teachings and don't know what kind of country the founding fathers created, they really seem to be on to something here.

Simple Mental Health Test

A simple cognitive test in the future will be to share a dozen of Trump's social media posts with someone and ask, "Does this suggest to you a mind in touch with reality?"

Inflation at 7.7% in Latest Report

Inflation report today - continuously compounded rate of change is 7.7%. The target is 2%, so we're a bit high.

 

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIAUCSL#

A Stunning Rise in Boise's Wealth

I worked with project managers at Micron in Boise. One of the PMs told me that Idaho made three chips: potato, wood, and computer.
I suspect that it's tough to get reservations at the few fancy restaurants in town this week. Their stock has been on quite the run, up more than 75% in the last month. Be an interesting study for someone at Boise State to look at the effect of that level of new wealth in a relatively small city, an increase in market cap of about 240 billion in just a month in a city of just 240,000 - or about a million dollars per person. (I know. A lot of this is held by institutional investors, etc. but still.)

Are We Smart Enough to Use AI?

Demis Hassabis recently mentioned the Jevons paradox, which occurs when increased efficiency in using a resource lowers its cost and then spikes demand enough that total consumption rises rather than falls.The economist William Stanley Jevons described it in 1865 in the context of coal: more efficient steam engines did not reduce British coal consumption but increased it, because the efficiency made coal cheaper and uses for it multiplied.

What happens to demand for intelligence when its cost dramatically drops?

Are we smart enough to navigate this transition? Or, more broadly, to use AI properly? It would be a terrible thing for future generations to say of us: they were not even smart enough to use AI.

And yet.

Does Trump Give His Supporters a Feeling of Superiority?

Is it too simplistic to suggest that Trump supporters prefer a leader who they feel superior to while Trump opponents prefer leaders they think will do a better job than they could?

Ted Turner Died Today

Ted Turner died today, 6 May 2026.His CNN was the first 24 hour news channel, which was quite the cultural shift. Suddenly news was something reported on all the time rather than just at day's end. At that point in history fewer people had any time to make history because they were spending so much time trying to keep up with daily news.

The Turner quotes that have entered general circulation tend to be his more aphoristic ones: "I am too rich to talk to. I'm a billionaire." "Sports is like a war without the killing."

What stuck with me, though, was a story he told about becoming a billionaire and how anticlimactic that was. At first he was excited about it but realized he couldn't exactly call his friends with the news. "Hey! I'm rich! Far richer than you!" So he called his wife who simply said something like, "Good for you. Does this mean you can come home early to help with the kids?"

He gave away a third of his net worth to the United Nations in 1997, before the giving pledge made such philanthropy fashionable. He took the position that money was how the game was scored but not what made life worth living.

Who Is Now Wearing the Crown Jewels Stolen from the Louvre?

Not quite a year ago, thieves broke into the Louvre and stole about $100 million in jewels once owned by the last couple of French queens.

Which billionaire or billionaire's companion is most likely to now wear those?

Bedlam in Southern California

 Today is both Cinco de Mayo and Taco Tuesday.

Madness in Southern California.

Venture Capital or Startup Funding This Century

 Global Startup Funding continues to be a huge force for creating new jobs, technology, markets, businesses and wealth. 

(ZIRP refers to zero interest rate policy, a time when money was so cheap that investments became even more alluring.)

If You Think Trump is Too Old Today - Just Wait Until Tomorrow!

In 2024, Trump supporters incessantly claimed that Joe Biden was too old.

So they then elected a guy who broke Biden's record as oldest president on inauguration day.
Now most Americans believe that Trump is too old.

Maybe, before we get into policy discussions, we could simply walk people through addition.
Biden on inauguration day: 78 years, 2 months.
Trump on inauguration day: 78 years, 7 months.

Given it is a four year term and how math and calendars work, a man who breaks the record for oldest president on inauguration day will break the record for oldest president on every following day of his presidency. (Oldest president on day 100! Oldest president after one year in office! Oldest ....)

We are about 15 months into Trump's 48 month term. If you think that he's not mentally sharp now .... give him another 32 months.

The following poll numbers shared by Heather Cox Richardson

Subcontracting Texting to an Unemployed Fortune Cookie Author

Struggling to keep up, he had turned all his texting over to an unemployed fortune cookie slip author. The good news is that he was then able to keep up with texting chains. The bad news is that his texts were increasingly ambiguous and subject to interpretation. Weirdly, this seemed to provoke the most interesting and revealing text responses he'd ever received. Ambiguity, he'd learned, was an invitation to confessions. When one's own state of mind was increasingly opaque, it seemed to provoke revelations.

Reality as a Stage Set

As a child, J. G. Ballard lived in affluence in an enclave of ex-pats in Shanghai, a world of large villas, tennis courts and country clubs.  When the Japanese invaded, all of that was disrupted and he eventually found himself in an interment camp, his life suddenly impoverished and his safety uncertain. (Among other traumas, he witnessed bored Japanese soldiers cruelly beat a Chinese rickshaw driver to death.)

J. G. Ballard said that one of the things that the end of his childhood taught him is that reality is a stage set that can be dismantled at any moment.

Technology and Problems

The performance artist Laurie Anderson has suggested that if you think that technology will solve your problems, you don't understand technology. Or your problems.

Kentucky Derby - Stretching the Limit of Attention Spans

He had an avid but fleeting interest in sports. The Kentucky Derby was out of the question. That race lasts more than two minutes. He preferred the 100-meter sprints, which he watched two or three times a year. He could spare ten seconds. Little more.
He was a busy man, and he admired athletes who didn't drag out their performance.

The Soviet Union on the Eve of the Nazi Invasion

"The Red Army in 1941 was the largest in the world. In tanks it outnumbered and in planes it equaled the the rest of the world's armies put together." 

"For every 100 Russian prisoners, only 3 were to remain alive."

"In just the first 3 months of war with Germany, the Russians lost more than 3 million men."

The World at War Documentary (1973)

The Moon Even Makes The Rocks Beneath Your Feet Rise and Fall

The Moon's orbit creates ocean tides that cause the level of water to rise and fall throughout the day. It also moves land, albeit much less. 

The tidal pull of the Earth on the Moon is so strong that it causes a tidal wave on the ground, a permanent bulge of about 4 meters on the side of the Moon facing the Earth. (The Moon always has the same side facing Earth, so this does not ripple across the surface of the Moon.) The Moon doesn't just cause a bulge in the Earth's oceans as it orbits, it causes a bulge in the Earth's land surface. The solid rocks beneath your feet rise and fall by roughly 30 to 50 centimeters as the Moon passes over head. You don't notice this but sensitive equipment does. 

If that doesn't make the hair stand up at the back of your neck, you may be insensitive to tidal forces.

Trump's Parade of Business Failures Continues

In the last year, the NASDAQ is up 20% and Donald Trump's stock is down 62%.

Happy Labor Day!

May 1 is International Workers' Day, observed as a labor holiday across most of the world.

It traces back to the 1886 strikes for an eight-hour workday in the United States, which culminated in the Haymarket affair in Chicago. Three years later, the international labor movement chose May 1 as the day to commemorate that struggle.

The typical workweek then was 60 to 84 hours. (Where did they find the time to strike, right?)
How much longer did it take to get to a 40-hour workweek? About half a century. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 initially capped the workweek at 44 hours; an amendment two years later brought it down to 40.

So, be patient. Keep pushing for change. Your grandchildren will thank you. Or would, if they did not assume that what they experience as normal had always been the case.