When good enough is, really, good enough
When good enough is, really, good enough
#99 - back at Symphony Hall for a live classical music fix
Hi there,
Post #99, let’s make it a good one. The move into December has gone to plan - snowy weather, gloves on and a sore throat. Nevertheless it has been a busy week at school with 2 official tests, 1 tomorrow and plenty of Christmas event organising as well as preparing for my Cambridge interview in a week’s time.
Highlight of the week: going to Symphony Hall with family. Having convinced them that it was a good use of their Friday night, we enjoyed the luxury that is live music in a purpose-built arena as world class as Symphony Hall. There to watch the Symphony Orchestra of India, we were also graced with the presence of a famous Indian trio played the traditional instruments of the tabla, sitar and bansuri, a joy to listen to. As my sister put it, “I thought I was going to have a really boring evening”.
I seem to be talking a lot about optimising recently, but maybe that’s a reflection of the limits on my time and thus the need to use it wisely and most effectively.
On Tuesday, we have our annual school Carol Service; I’m looking forward to giving a reading (of Edgar Guest’s At Christmas) and joining in with the choir’s songs.1 For this, I have wanted to widen the pool of students doing readings of poems and prayers, trying to give opportunities to those who otherwise wouldn’t get the chance.
With a day to go to when we needed the names down, we were missing a Year 8. When we went to the teacher in charge of the service asking for help, he quickly pulled one of the Year 8 kids there after our rehearsal and asked if he’d do a reading. I pulled it up on my phone, he had a go - and we were sorted.
The next day, I was reflecting on this with the music officer I was arranging this with and we got into a discussion about how it was a satisfactory but not optimal outcome.
The person we’d chosen is a very intelligent student who gets a lot of air time in the newsletter, rewards assemblies - you get the gist. I’d have liked to find a hidden gem, an uncut diamond.
But now, it’s sorted, it’s one less thing to think about, one fewer ‘open loop’ to use a term from the ‘Getting Things Done’ methodology (need to reread that book - Christmas?) in my mind. As I said to Esther (my fellow School Captain for those who can’t recall) this week, “delegation is about the careful spreading of headaches”,
I landed upon the idea that when you’re setting about a large project-like task such as this, perhaps it is useful to set an ‘optimal target’ and then a ‘hardline deadline’.
The ‘optimal target’ is the time by which you would like to have the whole thing organised, in the way you would like it to be - perfect and maximised for efficiency, in whatever metric the event requires.
The ‘hardline deadline’ is when the task has to be done by, no ifs or buts, in order you to not let someone else down the ‘production line’ down - in this case, it was Mr Buxton who needed to send the programme for approval.
This could be applied to exam revision as well. Time for a spotlight on my life-advice-guru Physics teacher, Mr Bradley.
In an ideal world, you’d all make full pretty notes, then do the textbook questions, then the exam questions and mark them, see where you went wrong, go over those topics again, and do more questions.
However, you don’t leave that long in your timeline for that sort of thing. So you need to strip it back to the essentials - go over the knowledge, do some questions to understand what you need to know, and then look over some mark schemes.
Over-optimisation can be the root cause of procrastination, because you’re not willing to get in the dirt and actually do the work. With limited time (I find myself coming back a lot to that though - it’s true !), what actually matters? Will it matter next week that I choose a more prominent Year 8 than another? Probably not. It’s not worth stressing over and if an alternative gets the job done and allows you to free up energy into more productive uses, then it’s an option worth choosing.
Being smart in deciding what to do
Another example that comes to mind with over-optimisation is a Year 12 and Year 13 Buddy System that we have been looking to implement this term. We have run into quite a few obstacles (and it’s been tough persevering through, convincing myself that the idea is worth the hassle it has been). As the 2 of us and the Head of Years sat down on Tuesday to come up with a solution, one of them brought up the saying “think we’re letting the perfect be the enemy of the good here” which was, ironically, perfect for the scenario. We had already poured far too much of our resources into it and so needed to come up with a solution that would allow us to move on as soon as possible.
On the other hand, looking to optimise is a good thing in other cases. I have conditioned myself (or have evolved) into repeatedly asking “There’s got to be a better way of doing this”, perhaps born from delving into the world of maths problem solving and preparation for university entrance exams and interviews where you are always looking to minimise time and effort (I hate the saying “mathematicians are lazy”) by using the best tool in your toolbox to tackle a problem.
I’ll leave you with a final example. We are currently at the start of our annual Christmas charity initiative, the ‘Giving Tree’ where we collect gift donations from the public to gift to those in need. This year’s charity captain has set an ambitious target of 5000 gifts and after Week 1, I’d say it is possible but will need a mighty big push in the next 3 weeks.
This is a scenario when we can look to optimise for every single factor; we sat down to do a “premortem” before, considering what could go wrong and writing down mitigating strategies. We’ll be looking more into these in the upcoming days to cover up any leaks and strengthen any of these components of the project.
To conclude, when embarking on a small task or a big project, it is worth considering ‘how good do I need it to be"?” or breaking it down into smaller constituents and considering how good each part they can be. Time is limited and so it is impossible to be perfect in every department, so where can you afford to cut corners and not be 100% the way you would like to be ‘in an ideal world’? Because, as I said after our Physics teacher’s advice in our lesson on ‘the ideal gas laws’, “life isn’t ideal”.
PS I really hope you’re clever enough to get that last joke; if you don’t, you need a new brain for Christmas 🎄😝🙊
Book of the week 📖
Finished Life on a Plate: The Autobiography of Gregg Wallace, which I picked up in the half term break. His career progression really sped up towards the end, resulting in 2 insights for me - a) your career development can be exponential, as long as you wait till that steep bit comes and b) your network and being personable goes leaps and bounds.
Podcast of the week🎙️
IMF Podcasts: Daniel Susskind: AI’s Transformation of Labour
A bit more economics behind the claim that “AI will take our jobs”. A ‘not quite’ from an Oxford professor to put us to rest.
Article of the week📰
Is the U.S. Stock Market as Bad as it Seems?
Starting to run out of these - need to read more! This one talks about being unable to predict the future of stocks as uncertainty is baked in.
Quote of the week💬
Bravery is not the absence of fear. Bravery is feeling the fear the doubt the insecurity and deciding that something else is more important. Mark Manson
I’ll be brave this week by trying to resist my tendency to over-optimise (even simple tasks like pairing people up 😭). I hope you’re brave in getting past your hurdles and getting jobs done this week too.
Adi
It’s my first time with the choir; I joined to help bolster the numbers and have actually quite enjoyed it!