Looking At Life As An Industrial Engineer
This unconventional perspective might just help
I was educated as an Industrial Engineer which was perfect because it aligned well with how I viewed the world. Industrial engineering is all about optimizing systems and processes. It could be optimizing a semiconductor factory, changing the flow of grocery store checkout lanes, or figuring out how to use the least amount of packaging while still getting most packages to the customer safely. For instance, if you managed a production company you would want to maximize profits by producing at the cheapest cost and pricing optimally. To do so you want your machines running as long as possible with minimal downtime. You’ll need to decide on factory layout, workers’ schedules, inventory levels, and pricing. Fairly simple example, but you can see it gets complicated quickly.
You are the system
Your life is even more complex, but don’t let that stop you from trying to optimize it. Life is a bunch of processes. You have your routines, both conscious and unconscious. Your heart is pumping, your lungs are inhaling, you are alive. You go to work, feed yourself, brush your teeth. What we call life is a bunch of routines punctuated with atypical moments. The routine isn’t necessarily bad, but often the atypical moments are the more exciting bits we end up remembering fondly.
One of my favorite shows is Westworld. There is a behavioral dichotomy between the hosts (robots) and the guests (humans). The hosts run on “loops” which they follow a script of actions and their “lives” are the same guest after guest, whereas the guests have the freedom to choose their own adventure. Anthony Hopkins' character points out that humans are more like the hosts than we care to admit.
“Humans fancy that there's something special about the way we perceive the world, and yet we live in loops as tight and as closed as the hosts do, seldom questioning our choices, content, for the most part, to be told what to do next.”
The path of society is well worn and what most of us espouse. Almost all parents would say they want their kids to do well in school in order to get into a good college so that they can get a good job. Some parents are so concerned that they are paying tens of thousands of dollars for elite preschools. How you spend your money is your prerogative, but I want people to do so with the understanding of what they are optimizing for.
Questioning is what will snap you out of the routine and allow you to examine why you are doing what you are doing. Once we begin our working lives, our days and years all blur together. Mark Twain said, “Most men die at 27, we just bury them at 72.” With so many milestones able to be completed before 30 (schooling, marriage, home purchase, bearing children) it isn’t surprising that life’s punctation marks seem to come with less frequency. Even if we choose the same life as our neighbors, we can still go about it in a more optimal manner.
So What Now?
Hopefully you get the idea, but what should you optimize for? Is it happiness, money, love, or something else? It is really up to you, but it probably incorporates everything. You are going to have some baseline requirements in several facets of life such as the need for food. Eating rice and beans everyday will suffice, but having fancier, more diverse meals will improve most people’s lives. Yet, simply spending more money on food isn’t going to increase your happiness very much if you lack in another area. You will need to come up with the variables and constraints to optimize your life. You’ll make mistakes and learn along the way, but over time you’ll get closer to your optimal life.
With this Substack I hope to share ideas that will allow you to become more introspective in order to unlock your time, energy, and money to do more of what you want.