It took me four years to realize the power of optimization. A founder’s life is on a roller coaster. Someday an employee will leave, some other day customers, there will be days when you will feel like giving up, and another day your personal life will be a wreck. The sooner we accept and optimize for this scenario: making peace with the everyday chaos, we will feel less miserable.
Nothing in our life is permanent: even the billionaires with all their money die. They optimize their life expectancy better than the poor.
Seneca, the stoic philosopher who was poisoned by Nero, talks about how short our allocated span of life is. He suggests optimizing our life.