Beyond Numbers: What to Optimize For

I started going to the gym with a goal to look and feel fit. Somewhere along the way, that shifted to ego lifting — hoisting heavier weights than I could properly handle to impress others. I got injured multiple times.

The goal had drifted from how I wanted to feel to a number I wanted to hit. The number had become the point.

Pro bodybuilder Kai Greene's perspective reset my thinking: the genuine goal of bodybuilding is developing muscle through hypertrophy. There are multiple ways to achieve that — and not all of them involve maxing out the bar. You can grow muscle with lighter weights, better form, and more controlled reps.

Start with how you want to feel → Find a way to track it.

The trap isn't unique to the gym. It happens in careers (chasing titles instead of skill), in products (optimizing for DAU when the real goal is value delivered), in relationships (measuring call frequency instead of actual connection).

The number is a proxy for something real. When the proxy becomes the objective, you've lost the plot. Go back to the original feeling you were trying to produce — and build your metric around that.