You Don’t Need the Best When You Travel. You Need Optimal.

I have a tendency to look for the best tool for a particular job.

What’s the best notebook for school?

What’s the best watch for everyday use?

What’s the best bag?

What’s the best whatever?

The problem is that “best” usually comes with an unspoken qualifier: best under ideal circumstances.

Travel is not an ideal circumstance.

Travel is where I’m starting to realize that I don’t necessarily want the thing that works incredibly well 90 percent of the time. Sometimes I want the thing that works good enough 100 percent of the time.

I don’t need the best.

I need optimal.

The notebook problem

For school, I had settled into using a binder. It made sense.

A binder gives me plenty of room. I can organize things exactly how I want. I can add and remove pages. For sitting at home and doing schoolwork, there are plenty of reasons why I might prefer it over a smaller notebook.

Then I started packing for a trip.

Suddenly, the question wasn’t:

“What is the best thing for taking school notes?”

It was:

“What can I comfortably fit in my carry-on that will let me study in the hotel lobby in the morning?”

Those are two completely different questions.

I already owned a full-size A5 Lochby cover. I had moved away from it because it wasn’t necessarily the best solution for everything I wanted to do at home.

But for this trip?

It was almost perfect.

It fits in my carry-on. It protects the notebook. I can throw a couple of inexpensive A5 inserts into it. I have more than enough paper for the amount of studying I’m realistically going to accomplish during a few days in Denver.

Does it beat my binder at being a binder?

No.

It doesn’t have to.

The binder might be the 10/10 solution when I’m sitting at home. But if it becomes a 3/10 solution the second I have to pack it into a carry-on, that matters.

The Lochby might only be an 8/10 for my normal use.

But it stays an 8/10 almost everywhere.

That consistency has value.

Then I accidentally did the same thing with my watch

I had also been going back and forth between my Apple Watch and my Garmin Instinct 3.

There are things I really like about the Apple Watch. Depending on what I’m doing, I could make a perfectly reasonable argument that it is the better smartwatch.

Then I started packing.

If I bring the Apple Watch, I need the Apple Watch charger.

That doesn’t sound like a big deal.

It’s one cable.

But travel is basically death by a thousand “one more things.”

One more cable.

One more charger.

One more adapter.

One more thing I need to remember when I leave the hotel.

One more thing I need to make sure I didn’t leave plugged into the outlet behind the nightstand.

Meanwhile, I charged my Garmin Instinct 3 before the trip.

That’s it.

I don’t need to bring its charging cable. I can wear the watch for the entire trip, track a couple of hotel workouts, come home, and probably still have days of battery remaining.

Is avoiding a single charging cable some monumental life improvement?

Of course not.

But that’s exactly the point.

I’m optimizing the entire system instead of each individual component.

Good enough everywhere can beat excellent somewhere

I think this is the distinction I’ve been missing when evaluating a lot of things.

We tend to evaluate products individually.

Which notebook is better?

Which watch is better?

Which bag is better?

But we don’t actually use products individually. We use them as parts of systems.

My notebook has to work with my bag.

My watch has to work with my travel schedule.

My electronics have to work with the number of chargers I want to carry.

My clothes have to work with the amount of luggage I’m bringing.

Once you start looking at the entire system, the rankings can change.

The thing that is technically “better” can actually make the overall system worse.

And the thing that is merely good enough can make everything around it easier.

That makes good enough surprisingly valuable.

There’s also value in owning something versatile

This trip also changed how I think about getting rid of things.

My Lochby didn’t need to be my favorite notebook system every single day to justify owning it.

It just needed to have a situation where it was particularly useful.

And now I found one.

Travel.

That doesn’t mean I need to start forcing myself to use it for everything again. When I’m home, maybe the binder makes more sense. When I’m traveling, the Lochby makes more sense.

The same principle applies to the Garmin.

I don’t have to declare one watch the winner forever.

The Garmin just happens to solve the problems I care about most when traveling: durability, fitness tracking, and absurdly long battery life without adding another charger to my bag.

Sometimes specialization is great.

Sometimes versatility wins.

And sometimes the best tool is simply the one that creates the fewest additional problems.

Stop optimizing the product. Optimize the experience.

I think that’s the larger lesson.

We spend a lot of time trying to find the best individual thing.

Maybe that’s the wrong target.

Instead of asking:

“What is the best notebook?”

Ask:

“What notebook makes my life easiest in this situation?”

Instead of:

“What is the best watch?”

Ask:

“What watch can I put on my wrist and completely forget about for the next five days?”

The answer might change depending on where you are and what you’re doing.

And that’s okay.

Because the goal isn’t to assemble a collection of individually perfect objects.

The goal is to build a system that works.

Sometimes that means choosing the thing that performs exceptionally well 90 percent of the time.

Other times, I’ll gladly take the thing that works pretty damn well 100 percent of the time.

Especially when I’m trying to fit everything into a carry-on.

You don’t need the best when you travel. You need optimal.