Life is fundamentally a constrained optimization problem. Yet Lagrange multipliers or any other tricks from maths won't help you at all...
First of all, most of us spend about 30-40 years of our life to even find out what are we optimizing for. AKA we don't even know what the f we want. Often this involves going down the wrong path for years (or decades) finding yourself in a miserable state (mid or third life crises come to mind).
Second, our constraints change all the time over our lifetime. We get more (or less) wealthy, we get more (or less) time, we achieve more (or less) overall freedom to pursue our goals, etc...
This whole thing seems a bit hopeless: shooting blind at a moving target with a gun that is running out of bullets (like most guns - what a metaphor). On top of all of this, there's one constraint that's only ever getting tighter: time. You are not getting more of that shit ever, despite what some Silicon Valley anti-ageing-cryogenic nutcase is telling you.. Entropy moves in one direction and it's not in the direction of youth.
There are people who genuinely enjoy not knowing where they are heading; and that's totally fine! However, for the rest of us, the recipe for a good life seems pretty straightforward:
1. Find out what you're optimizing for in life quickly (but ideally after you turned 30). Make it concrete and short. Make it fit into two sentences, at most. Spoiler alert: roughly 90% of art that was ever generated on this planet by humans is trying to tell you that the answer is NOT money, fame or power. So take a hint!
2. Once you have your target, map out your constraints. What are the things that hinder you in getting to your goal? Which are the 3 biggest ones? Which one can you reduce the easiest? Know that, and whenever you can, work on moving that in the right direction.
Btw, at this point it might feel like the universe is mocking us... Even working on your constraints is a constrained optimization problem on its own FFS. But constraints and removing them are vitally important. The difference between getting to your goal with and without some constraints can be decades. I.e. you can either enjoy the life you wanted for yourself for a few decades, or barely just get there to then suddenly die.
3. Remind yourself every single day of 1. and 2. Then zoom out and do the work that moves you to 1. while respecting 2. The rest will follow. It's not in your control at this point, so chill the f out and enjoy the nice moments you get on your way to the minimum (or maximum - depending on how you set up your optimization problem).
Alternatively you can just become a devout Buddhist and realize that it all starts and ends with "wanting stuff", then try to deprogram 3.5 billion years of evolution in your monkey brain and simply not want things...
