What is the exact monetary value of effort you expend knowing, definitively, that the outcome is worthless to everyone but yourself?
I was washing the ink off my forearms-Prussian Blue and Lamp Black, a truly terrible mix I’d used to attempt abstract, three-dimensional calligraphy-and I stood there for a full three minutes watching the drain swallow the color. The resulting canvas, which resembled a map drawn by a caffeinated spider, was leaning against the wall. It will never be framed. It will certainly never be sold. If anyone saw it, I’d be embarrassed. Yet, I had spent roughly 5 hours on that mess.
The Core Frustration
That sinking feeling-that immediate, visceral assessment of time versus utility-is the core frustration of the hyper-optimized modern existence. We have internalized the mandate of the spreadsheet: if it cannot be leveraged, scaled, or monetized, it is a liability.
I just spent ten minutes trying to remember the exact sequence of browser tabs I accidentally closed earlier, which is ridiculous because none of them were crucial, but the sheer inefficiency of losing information made my jaw tight. This is the problem: we are conditioned to believe that inefficiency is the enemy. It is a lie.
The Argument for Private Failure
I am arguing for the contrarian angle: the highest form of success is dedicated, private failure. It is the pursuit of something complex and beautiful that guarantees zero return on investment. This is not about failure being a ‘learning opportunity’-that’s just another form of optimization jargon. This is about failure as a dedicated practice, a ritual that defines identity outside of market forces. You do it badly, just for the soul, and you keep the proof hidden.
“The tension is everything. In the structured business letter, I see conformity. I see the mask. In the pure, ugly cross-hatching, I see the human being wrestling with the pen, trying to break through the page. That’s expertise. That’s the real data.”
– Natasha S.K., Handwriting Analyst
Take the case of Natasha S.K. She is a handwriting analyst-a professional focused entirely on interpreting intent and personality through the non-verbal residue of communication. When I spoke to her about the concept of the ‘unmarketable script,’ she told me about a client she called R. She wasn’t analyzing R’s letters to a lawyer or a love note; she was looking at a scrap of paper filled only with repetitive, violent cross-hatching done with a heavy fountain pen, almost gouging the paper. Zero communicative value. Absolute emotional clarity. Natasha charged her standard rate, which was precisely $575, because the effort required to interpret the void was greater than interpreting a structured essay.
I admit, my own specific mistake was applying my business planning template to my calligraphy supplies. I tracked the cost of the specialty paper, the imported pigments, the exact 45 minutes I spent cleaning brushes. I couldn’t help it; the moment I decided to get good at it, I killed the pleasure. The ledger demands justification. But some things are meant to defy the ledger. They are meant to be expensive in time and cheap in output.
Chaos Permitted
Optimization Forced
We need unmarketable space to breathe. Where do you go when you need to be certain you are not going to be judged for the quality of your output? Where is your private, badly maintained trail? If every journey you take must be a guaranteed success-a smooth transfer, highly rated and reviewed-then you stop noticing the subtle, difficult terrain that actually shapes you.
The Optimized Journey vs. The Chaotic Process
It reminds me of the curated luxury experience. People plan intense, long-distance trips, scheduling every moment, optimizing comfort, ensuring the route is seamless. If you are heading from Denver to Aspen, you want guaranteed safety, luxury, and predictability. You hire a dedicated, professional service like
Mayflower Limo to manage the logistics of the unpredictable mountain roads. And that is fine, essential even, when the destination matters more than the chaotic process. But when the destination is the process, chaos must be permitted.
My problem was that I tried to bring that ‘Mayflower’ precision to my messy calligraphy desk. The moment I introduced the metric of professional quality, I imported the expectation of the optimized journey. I tried to skip the necessary chaos. You cannot optimize the soul. It demands resistance and waste.
Natasha S.K. taught me something fundamental about the relationship between effort and display. She showed me a page from a private journal-the writer had made 235 separate attempts to draw a perfect spiral, failing every single time, the lines blurring and shaking. This was not practice for anything; it was an exorcism. The energy contained within those pages dwarfed the formal elegance of any polished manuscript she had ever analyzed.
235
Failures Documented
The energy contained within those pages dwarfed the formal elegance.
The Cost of Optimizing Joy
This is where we miscalculate the mathematics of existence. Relevance dictates that we must understand the cost of optimizing joy. We optimize it until it snaps, morphing into professional burnout disguised as a passion project. We use the tools of productivity to excavate the things that make us feel human, searching for revenue streams where there should only be tidal flow. We ask our hobbies to pay rent. When they inevitably fail to do so, we discard them, feeling guilty about the wasted time, forgetting that the time spent in non-utility is often the only time we are fully present.
Value Proposition Status (Internal Value vs. External Utility)
INVERTED
I keep the awful, abstract calligraphy leaning against the wall. It’s a physical reminder of the specific kind of freedom that comes from knowing you produced something genuinely bad and thoroughly unnecessary. It cost me 5 hours, $45 in imported ink and paper, and a small sliver of my professional pride. The value proposition is upside down: the higher the cost to my time/wallet and the lower the external utility, the higher the internal value.
We must allow ourselves to dedicate resources-time, money, specialized supplies-to endeavors that have no future, no audience, and no payoff. We must invest in private failure. We must champion the things that fail to launch. This is the only way to ensure that a core part of your identity remains untouched by the transactional nature of the market. It’s an essential act of self-defense against the relentless efficiency of the machine.
The Solitary Commitment
What are you doing inefficiently?
Keep the Proof Hidden
What defines your soul?
If you stripped away every title, every revenue stream, and every audience metric, what solitary, inefficient, beautiful thing would you still be doing? What expensive, messy failure would you still be committed to? If the answer is ‘nothing,’ then you might have optimized your way right out of a soul.
