Stop Optimizing Your Toothbrush Routine

There's a version of productivity advice that tells you to audit everything. Systemize everything. Optimize everything. And then there's the version we actually believe in, which is: some stuff is supposed to be boring. Leave it alone.

That's basically where Toby and I landed this week, and we got there by talking about teeth.

Specifically how little either of us thinks about brushing our teeth. Electric toothbrush goes in, brain checks out, two minutes later you're done and you cannot tell anyone which quadrant you started in. And yet, somehow, no cavities. Dentist is happy. Outcome: achieved.

The dentist, of course, wants you to floss between every tooth and buy a water pick and gargle with something that costs $18 a bottle. And sure, maybe that's technically better. But if the goal is good dental hygiene and you're already there, what exactly are we optimizing for?

This is the question we can't seem to answer at work either.

The Invisible Process Problem

Here's the thing about a process that's working well: you don't see it. Nobody walks up to you and says, "Hey, great email triage today." The outcome shows up — inbox managed, nothing slipped — but the process itself is invisible. Which means it's also easy to mess with, because there's no obvious cost to changing something nobody's watching.

Toby made a point that stuck with me: we overvalue change because we overvalue the impact that change is going to have. And we undervalue the quiet, consistent, get-it-done stuff — precisely because it's quiet.

So someone wanders in, sees a process that looks a little boring, and starts stirring. Not because the outcome is broken. Just because stirring feels like doing something.

Perceived Effort vs. Actual Effort

We also got into the dishes. Specifically, the deeply human experience of walking past a sink full of dishes approximately fourteen times before doing anything about it.

Here's the math: loading the dishwasher takes about four minutes. Four minutes is 0.4% of a sixteen-hour day. And yet — the psychological weight of it? Enormous. It feels like surgery. It feels like a decision that requires sitting down first.

The perceived effort and the actual effort are completely out of sync. And this happens constantly at work too. The task that's been sitting on your list for two weeks, the one you've been dreading? Usually takes twenty minutes once you start.

Which is why time-boxing works. You're not committing to finishing — you're committing to starting. Wash one fork. Spend twenty minutes on email in the morning and call it done. Once you're moving, the rest usually follows.

When Is Good Enough Actually Good Enough?

This is the question we probably should be asking more: when the outcome is being met, how do we know when to leave it alone?

Because we don't ask that enough. We anchor on ego. We equate change with value, and stillness with stagnation. But sometimes the most professional thing you can do is recognize that the process is working, resist the urge to tinker, and point your energy somewhere it's actually needed.

Toby brought up something worth sitting with: the Zeigarnik Effect — the idea that we remember incomplete tasks far better than completed ones. Which might explain why email feels so unending. There's no definition of done. It's an infinite problem pretending to be a manageable one.

Give it a definition of done — twenty minutes, then close it — and suddenly it's just a boring task you finished. Which is exactly what it should be.

The Case for Boring

Great ideas happen in the shower because your brain isn't trying. There's something to that. The boring stuff — the routines, the repetitive tasks, the things you do on autopilot — those aren't failures of ambition. They're clearing the way for something better.

So yeah. Let the boring stuff be boring. Save your energy for the work that actually needs it.

And for the love of everything, stop auditing your toothbrush routine.