Forest Gump taught me something about optimization that 25 years of engineering couldn’t…

I just watched Forest Gump for the first time last week. Yeah, I know. Where have I been?

But one scene hit differently than I expected. Someone asks Forest why he’s been running across the country for over three years. Was it for world peace? Some charity? A cause?

“I just felt like running,” he says.

That’s it. No purpose. No mission statement. No measurable outcome. He just felt like doing it.

And honestly? That idea makes most high performers deeply uncomfortable.

We’ve optimized the fun right out of our lives.

As engineers, technical leaders, and ambitious professionals, we’ve trained ourselves to view everything through an ROI lens. Every activity needs justification. Every hobby should “add value” to our careers or personal brand. Even our downtime gets framed as “strategic recharging” or “creative ideation time.”

We can’t just do something because we feel like it. There has to be a reason. A purpose. In some way, it must connect back to our goals, our business, our advancement.

The result? We’ve become productivity machines who’ve forgotten how to be human.

Here’s what I’ve been noticing in myself lately:

I’ve been using Suno, an AI tool that generates songs. I collaborate with AI to write songs about my life: being a Gen X dad, an engineer-turned-coach, navigating loss and remarriage, and raising six kids. The tool creates the music, and I get songs that are completely, authentically mine.

As a coach, engineer, sales guy, project manager, speaker, father, and husband, creating music serves absolutely no purpose. It doesn’t advance my business. It doesn’t build my coaching practice. It doesn’t help me land speaking gigs or close deals.

And you know what? Sometimes I feel guilty about the time I spend on it.

That guilt is the problem.

What I’ve realized is: I love creating these songs. Growing up Gen X with music always around me – from mixtapes to movie soundtracks – I finally have music where I relate to every single line because it’s about my life, my experiences, my story. Not someone else’s interpretation. Mine.

Sometimes I capture a mood I’m in or work through feelings I’m processing. Other times, I’ve written love songs for my wife that tell our story – the journey we’ve been on together, the life we’re building. Why did I do this? Why not? There’s no business case for it. No ROI. Just the desire to create something that expresses what I feel.

The fact that it energizes me or helps me process emotions isn’t why I do it. Those are just side effects of giving myself permission to do something purely because I enjoy it.

How many things have you stopped doing because they don’t “serve a purpose”?

That hobby you used to love but abandoned because it wasn’t “productive enough.” The creative outlet you shut down because you couldn’t figure out how to monetize it. The activity that brought you joy but didn’t advance your career goals.

We tell ourselves we’re being strategic. Focused. Disciplined.

Really? We’re just becoming boring, one-dimensional people who’ve forgotten what it feels like to do something purely for the joy of doing it.

And the kicker? This optimization mindset doesn’t just kill your creativity; it makes you a worse leader, a less interesting colleague, and frankly, exhausting to be around. Because everything becomes transactional. Everything needs ROI. Nothing just… is.

The holiday season is coming. You’ll have time off. And if you’re like most high performers, you’ll either fill that time with “productive” activities that advance your goals, or feel guilty about any moment spent doing something that doesn’t.

Both options miss the point entirely.

So here’s what I’m suggesting:

Identify one thing you used to do purely for enjoyment that you’ve abandoned because it “serves no purpose.” Give yourself permission to do it this week (or sometime over the Holiday season). Not as “creative recharging” or “strategic thinking time.” Just because you feel like it.

Notice the guilt when it shows up, then do it anyway.

And when someone asks what you did this weekend after you spent three hours on something “unproductive,” try this response: “I felt like doing it.”

That’s a complete sentence.

Forest ran for three years, two months, fourteen days, and sixteen hours. Not because he had a grand purpose. Not because it served some higher goal. He ran because he felt like running.

And in the process, he became exactly who he needed to be.

Maybe we all need to run a little more.