Optimization is just expensive denial.

There's a phrase I keep coming back to, and I want to share where it came from.

I was standing in a parking lot at a company picnic, my second child at home, just back from maternity leave I was looking around and realized that literally nothing had changed while I was gone. Same role. Same team. Same manager with the same reasons why nothing could evolve. Same invisible walls.

And I had been pushing against those walls for years. Better reframes. Better communication. Better performance. I had tried most of it. And each time I pushed, I got just enough back to keep me trying and just little enough back to leave me doubting myself.

That's when I understood something I hadn't been able to name before: I wasn't failing to optimize my role well enough. I was optimizing the wrong thing entirely.

Optimization is expensive denial.

When the container fundamentally doesn't fit who you're becoming, making it more efficient just means you're spending more energy staying somewhere you've already outgrown. You get better at tolerating something that was never meant to be tolerated - it was meant to be outgrown.

Standing in that parking lot, I stopped asking how do I make this work and started asking a different question entirely:

What do I want to be true about my life six months from now that isn't true today?

That shift from fixing to architecting really changed everything. Within a few months I was in a different role. Within a few years I had built a career I had actually designed. That picnic was the inflection point. Not because anything changed externally that day but because something shifted in how I was asking myself the question.

I share this because a few of you wrote back after last week's issue and said: okay, so now what?

This is the now what. Stop optimizing the container your in. Start asking what you actually want to build.

What do you want to be true six months from now that isn't true today? Hit reply and tell me, even if your answer is "I genuinely have no idea yet." That answer matters too, because the willingness to ask what if is where it always starts.

Heather

P.S. I'm opening up a few one-on-one sessions in March for people who are ready to stop optimizing and start architecting. If that's you, just hit reply and we'll find a time.