The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one’s ‘own,’ or ‘real’ life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one’s real life — the life God is sending one day by day.

C.S. Lewis

“Min/max” is a term used in gaming to refer to optimization techniques that turn what is intended to be a diversion from the real world into math equations. There are some who get some joy out of doing it, but for most, it takes any joy away. It ruins the experience for everyone else, too. “Min/Max Masculinity” is what I’m calling a similar scheme I see in the world of masculine writing.

Min/Max Masculinity is a pattern of living defined by singular obsession with some goal. Everything becomes about achieving that goal. You want to build a successful business, make tons of money, etc. Every moment, you are weighing whether what you are doing is getting you there or not. I read a book on personal finance once that suggested you should evaluate whether mowing your own lawn would cost you less money to outsource to a neighbor’s kid than you could make working your job during those hours. That was one of the less extreme examples.

You plan your days rigidly, you avoid all distractions, and you hustle. All the time, every day. The more extreme the hustling, the more hours you pack into a day with your work, the better. Some of the better authors admit there’s some balance between that work and spending time with your family or taking a day of rest once a week (which means church and reading Scripture), but that’s it. Otherwise, you work unceasingly toward your goal.

I’ve tried this pattern. In the late 2000’s I attempted to organize my life in a way that let me spend every moment looking for ways to make money. I’ve tried it several times to do this, and I’ve found exactly one result each time it’s been tried: burnout. Not just burnout, but depression. I become stuck in the mental groove of imagining that I must be doing some specific thing each moment, I can’t hope to choose the optimal thing with any consistency, and my desire to do anything productive is sapped away. It has become so bad at times it has ruined my effectiveness at my day job for weeks on end. I’ve become motivated again, tried it again, and seen it happen again, all with the same pattern.

So as not to mislead, I’m not saying hard work is bad, finding ways to become more effective at different parts of your life is bad, learning new things is bad, or any of that. That would be self-defeating for the author of a blog written ostensibly to teach and get you thinking. Rather, it is this all-consuming optimization I am writing against.

We could contrast Min/Max Masculinity with the quote by CS Lewis above. I would modify the quote slightly and remove “unpleasant”; not all interruptions are unpleasant, even if being interrupted usually is. On this view, we still make plans and work to accomplish them, but we don’t think algorithmically, trying to optimize every moment. We understand that distractions from our children or wife, our friends, nature, or other things are going to bombard us, and those things are not contrary to our lives but make up a core part of it. They are good. The Min/Maxer would try to cut all of it out as precisely as possible. The balanced life would not.

It’s the difference between the father who is always on the phone trying to get work done and the father who sits down to play with his children while is phone is off and a distant memory. It’s the difference between the man who volunteers for all of the extra projects at work and stays late most nights and the man who works hard but turns it off when he needs to.

The Min/Maxer is far more likely to write on productivity and masculinity, but having seen so many men burn out following this kind of advice, it’s a shame.