Don't Maximise. Optimise.

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Maximise productivity. Maximise health. Maximise performance. There is even looksmaxxing now.

The assumption is simple: if something is good, more must be better.

But more isn’t always better.

That’s the difference between maximising and optimising.

Maximising asks: How far can I push this?

Optimising asks: Where is the best place to stop?

Five mental models can help you find that point.

1. Diminishing returns

The law of diminishing returns describes what happens when additional effort continues to produce results, but each extra unit produces less than the one before it.

Imagine designing a website.

The first few hours can transform it. You establish the structure, typography, colours and hierarchy.

Later, you’re adjusting margins, reconsidering font sizes and moving something three pixels to the left.

The improvements are getting smaller.

That’s diminishing returns.

The return hasn’t disappeared. It has diminished.

And that’s exactly why knowing when to stop is difficult.

2. Marginal thinking

Instead of asking:

Is this valuable?

Ask:

Is one more unit of this valuable?

Economists call this thinking at the margin.

Consider university.

Perhaps the first year gives you independence, friendships, knowledge and exposure to new ideas. The second deepens them. A third year will probably still teach you something.

But that’s not enough to justify doing it.

The better question is:

Is one more year worth what one more year will cost me?

This changes the calculation completely.

You stop evaluating everything you’ve gained and start evaluating what comes next.

3. Opportunity cost

Every additional squeeze costs something.

Money is obvious. Time is even more interesting.

Suppose another two hours would make a project 2% better.

Sounds worthwhile.

But perhaps those same two hours could be used to create something new, learn a skill, find a customer or spend time with someone you care about.

The question isn’t:

Will another two hours improve this?

It probably will.

The question is:

Is this the best use of those two hours?

That’s opportunity cost.

4. The juice is not worth the squeeze

Eventually these ideas converge on a decision.

There is still juice left.

You could keep squeezing.

But you’ve decided the remaining juice isn’t worth the effort required to extract it.

This explains why perfection becomes so expensive.

Going from bad to good can happen surprisingly quickly. Going from good to excellent takes considerably more work. Going from excellent to perfect can consume ridiculous amounts of time.

The final few percentage points may cost more than everything that came before them.

At some point, good enough really is good enough.

Not because better is impossible.

Because better is no longer worth the price.

But there’s a failure mode on the other side too: stopping early and calling it optimising.

The question is whether you stopped because the next squeeze wasn’t worth it, or simply because squeezing got hard.

Optimising isn’t an excuse for doing mediocre work.

5. The sunk-cost fallacy

One more trap.

“I’ve already spent six months on this.”

“I’ve already spent £5,000.”

“I’ve already completed three years.”

“I’ve already spent all weekend working on it.”

These statements feel important.

Usually, they aren’t.

The time and money have already gone. They shouldn’t determine whether you spend the next hour, pound, month or year.

The only question is what you do next.