Life
The quiet advantage of taking the long way
On resisting the urge to optimize every corner of life—and what becomes visible when you leave room for wandering.
There is a particular kind of confidence in choosing a route that is not the fastest one.
We are taught to remove friction: shorten the meeting, automate the task, find the quickest path across the city. Much of this is sensible. But when optimization becomes a reflex, it quietly removes the circumstances in which surprise can occur.
The long way is not always better. It is simply different. It gives a thought enough time to become interesting. It lets a neighborhood reveal itself one storefront at a time. It creates the small, unplanned encounters that make a day feel inhabited rather than completed.
Lately, I have been trying to leave one part of each week deliberately unoptimized. A walk without a destination. A meal that takes longer than it needs to. A book chosen without checking whether it is considered important.
This is not a rejection of useful tools or ambitious work. It is a reminder that efficiency is a means, not a worldview—and that some of the best parts of a life cannot be hurried into existence.