The Fountain:
The False God of Optimization
As a son of Russia's landed gentry, Ilya Ilyitch Oblomov has all the wealth for a happy future, and yet he taints it with his vice: extreme laziness.
Every day he decays in bed, lost of all motivation, alive but not living.
An anxious letter from his country estate warns of the financial peril brought on by his apathy, but what can Oblomov do? It took several chapters to merely get out of bed, and now he's supposed to travel across the country? Impossible.
The cause of his laziness is a childlike fantasy - something akin to Peter-Pan Syndrome - where he retreats into dreams of idyllic childhood life—perfect, ordered, detached from all responsibility.
His cocooning behaviour ruins a future with his lover, makes him vulnerable to money-hungry backstabbers, and condemns him to a life of nothing—a long long nothing that ends with his final wish:
He dies and sleeps forever, free from the fear of change.
Oblomov's fate - dramatic as it is - calls the culture of "optimization" into question.
(ok. it doesn't. I'm bridging the gap anyway.)
In the learning/productivity space, optimization is the golden bull to worship—we are told to plan every minute, biohack every cell, and meticulously arrange every variable for wealth, success, and happiness.
And why the hell not?
The value seems obvious: a perfect environment means the best chance of making it.
In practice, optimization can be the dagger you fall on. It doesn't work for everyone because it relies on perfect order—stable routines and a predictable tomorrow.
It forgets that life is chaos.
There are a hundred distractions ready to pull your focus away at the slightest crack of complacency.
There are moments your mind and body disagree with the plan, where all they can offer is tiredness and lethargy.
Even further beyond your control is the world—blocked roads, layoffs, emergencies, breakups, deaths, a whole list of petty disruptions and painful tragedies to shatter the illusion of order.
There is no announcement, nor a fanfare, just a sharp split in your destiny.
Some planning is necessary. It's your island to stand upon as the waves crash and the winds blow around you. Routines ground us, and without them, we are like twigs in a river, aimless and drifting.
However, optimization means too much planning. It's fussy and pedantic.
If you bind yourself to such a strict system, then any deviation from the norm - even if tiny - will raise stress and frame itself as "failure" in your mind.
Nature tells a similar story: hardy species like dandelions will thrive almost anywhere. To us, they represent a healthy middle-ground between routine and flexibility.
Soil type? Eh, who cares.
Temperature? Not fussy mate.
A crack in the pavement? Lovely stuff.
No matter what nature deals the dandelion, it grows with a cool nonchalance. I bet if they had mouths, you wouldn't hear a whisper of complaint.
On the other hand, a plant like the sundew is more particular: it demands acidic, low-nutrient wetlands. Disturb this fine balance, and the stress is too much to bear—the sundew populations wither away while the dandelions watch.
In a similar way, optimization strips you of resilience and puts you at the whim of your surroundings.
Routine is necessary to anchor ourselves, but it mustn't blind us to chaos.
It's real.
It's inevitable.
We cannot get stuck in idealistic fantasies like Oblomov did, and we definitely cannot make ourselves vulnerable to the unknown trials that await.
A dead branch cracks in the wind, but a live one bends with it.
Yours,
Odysseas