Don’t make it easier to do things you shouldn’t be doing

Sometimes we want to do things that will make it easy to do one thing and will enable us to also do things that we shouldn’t.

For example, I have a recording tool that I’ve found is amazing for editing. It makes it incredibly easy to make changes to videos after the fact. And it’s great when I do editing myself. But honestly I want other people to edit for me because editing isn’t a good use of my time.

A few times I’ve found myself wanting to make it even easier to edit, to which I find myself spending more time editing as opposed to recording new content. That’s a net loss for me even though the editing appears a small win, it doesn’t offset missed opportunities.

Be careful when you optimize something, if it will enable other bad things to happen that outweigh the benefits, perhaps don’t optimize!

You might find your hand in the cookie jar multiple times, coming back to the same optimization, keep slapping your hand and put the lid back on.