Overthink, overplan, overoptimize

An adaptation of Samuel Johnson's Rambler #134

Samuel Johnson, an old dead white guy, is primarily famous for writing the first dictionary of the English language. (He is also famous for, and I struggle to say it after the magnitude of the last same sentence, a hearty meme.)

It turns out he made those faces because he was blind in one eye and very shortsighted in the other on account of a childhood infection, and also because he suffered from something like Tourette’s, which first presented after a nervous breakdown in his twenties. (Source: The Internet.)

Johnson had a curious work style. Under pressure, he could produce content incredibly quickly. He compiled the famous dictionary in 9 years, with only a small team of assistants. In comparison, the comparable French dictionary had taken 40 top scholars 40 years.¹

But when he wasn’t under pressure, he was, at least by his own estimation, very lazy. We have written records about how, throughout his life, often multiple times a year, he would make resolutions and sacred vows to get up early and work without stopping. We also have the records about how he broke those resolutions over and over again, until he died.

And from Johnson’s unique life, we end up with one of the finest essays on laziness in the English language, Rambler #134. The Rambler was a periodical produced by Johnson, physically similar to a newspaper, but closer in character to a modern Substack: it came out twice a week and consisted of just one essay per issue.²

As Johnson alludes to in the text of #134, he didn’t start writing #134 until the courier, who would take the completed text to the printer, showed up at his house. Johnson told him to wait, and he dashed off this incredible essay in one go, likely without reviewing the text even once.³

My experiment for this post is to adapt Rambler #134 into contemporary idiom, quoting the most delicious aphorisms and aiming to keep the elevated sentiment while simplifying the convoluted grammar and 18th century vocabulary.

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I sat yesterday trying to decide what to write about in this post. I looked through my backlog of potential topics, imagining all the possible posts I could write, but failing to settle on any one topic, I wasted time until the moment I realized that, if I did not start writing now, I wouldn’t finish a post before my friend would pick me up at the airport and I would lose internet access.

This Substack covers such a wide range of topics that it isn’t a challenge to find something to write about, and so I started blaming myself for “having so long neglected what was unavoidably to be done, and of which every moment’s idleness increased the difficulty.”⁴

“The folly of allowing ourselves to delay what we know cannot be finally escaped is one of the general weaknesses which [...] prevail to a greater or lesser degree in every mind [...]” Even if you don’t yield to laziness, you will always feel its temptation.⁵

It is a good thing to treat the present moment as immensely precious, and so it is wise to discount the future to some degree. But treasuring the present can lead us to the irrational hope that future moments, which will also be precious, will somehow solve our present problems, without any present effort.

Taking out loans against the future also puts us at risk for making the worst investment, which is to make no investment at all. If you put off to tomorrow what could be done today, but then do nothing else today, then you have lost something and gained nothing.

Mindfulness and its focus on the present moment is all the rage, but “[i]dleness never can secure tranquillity; the call of reason and of conscience will pierce the closest pavilion of the sluggard, and, though it may not have force to drive him from his [home], will be loud enough to hinder him from sleep. Those moments which he cannot resolve to make useful, by devoting them to the great business of his being, will still be usurped by [...] remorse and vexation [which will] forbid him to enjoy what he is so desirous to appropriate.”

“Thus life is languished away in the gloom of anxiety, and consumed in [making resolutions we break the next day]; in forming purposes which we scarcely hope to keep, and reconciling ourselves to our own cowardice by excuses which [...] we know to be absurd.” The only resolution we seem able to keep, is to stay in the vicious cycle of worry, inaction, self-reproach, and fear. Procrastination is all the pain of pulling the bandaid off bit by bit, but with none of the actual accomplishment of getting the bandaid off.

This pain leads to fear that we won’t finish what we start, that we’ll deserve more self-shame for attempting to start than for attempting nothing at all. Constant fear creates a special capacity for unnecessary suffering, a “perspicacity of cowardice” that “imbitter[s] life not only with those miseries by which all earthly beings are really more or less tormented, but with those which do not yet exist [...]”

I expect many of my readers would identify as “high-achieving,” and I expect that for them, it’s difficult to identify with concerns about “laziness.” For these people, with “active faculties and more acute discernment,” idleness comes in special flavors. One is analysis paralysis: “[h]e to whom many objects of pursuit arise at the same time, will frequently [...] change his course as new attractions prevail, and harass himself without advancing.”

Another is overplanning: “[h]e who sees different ways to the same end, will, unless he watches carefully over his own conduct, lay out too much of his attention upon the comparison of probabilities and the adjustment of expedients, and pause in the choice of his road, till some accident intercepts his journey.”

Another is overthinking: if someone is smart enough to predict problems that could arise down the line, and can come up with many ways to improve on a simple plan, then he “will not easily be persuaded that his project is ripe for execution; but will superadd one contrivance to another, endeavor to unite various purposes in one operation, multiply complications, and refine niceties, till he is entangled in his own scheme, and bewildered in the perplexity of various intentions.”

Another is overvaluing optimization and undervaluing opportunity cost: he who tries to find a single life, job, and house that has all good things he wants and none of the bad he doesn’t “must waste his life in roving to no purpose from province to province.”

Another, and my personal bugbear, is a combination of perfectionism and overinflated ego, which leads to castles in the air and no stones on the ground: “He will attempt a treatise on some important subject, and amass materials, consult authors, and study all the dependent and collateral parts of learning, but never conclude himself qualified to write. He that has abilities to [imagine] perfection will not easily be content without it; and, since perfection cannot be reached, will lose the opportunity of doing well in the vain hope of unattainable excellence.”

In defense of ambivalent career choices, I hear people say that life is long and can have many chapters. That may be true, but “the probability that [life] will be much shorter than nature allows, ought to awaken every man to the active prosecution of whatever he is desirous to perform.” Nothing in life is guaranteed except your own efforts, and “he who is cut off in the execution of an honest undertaking has at least the honor of falling in his rank, and has fought the battle, though he missed the victory.”

And thus, I post, without further editing.

1. Johnson originally estimated the dictionary would take him 3 years. When someone reminded him of the French situation, that he expected to do alone in 3 years what had taken 40 French scholars 40 years, Johnson quipped that “[a]s three is to sixteen hundred [i.e., 40 times 40], so is the proportion of an Englishman to a Frenchman.” Quips like this are another thing Johnson is famous for.

2. Why call it “Rambler?” Partially because the series covers many topics, but also because Johnson was tired of trying to come up with a better name, and resolved to sit on his bed but not go to sleep until he had found a better one. He eventually gave up and went to sleep.

3. Johnson was also famous for this kind of feat, and he continues to fascinate people like me, because we can read his personal papers and things like the Rambler, to see how laziness, speed, pride, and shame could be so thoroughly mixed in one person.

4. I did take a moment to feel superior, that I was lazy only up until the moment I could no longer afford to be lazy, in contrast with people who are lazy past that point, thus letting opportunities slip or letting small annoyances expand into expensive disasters.

5. If a reader contends that they have truly freed themselves from laziness, I suspect this means they have ceased to be human in some way, by some psychic or chemical lobotomy.