The Importance of Overpaying

If you win a lot in an auction house, it means that you overpaid. You don't know how much less money you could have used to buy that lot. The only way to figure out the extent to which you're overbidding is to systematically experiment with your time and effort investments. Pull back a little bit and see what happens. Don't experiment on a critical project or an essential responsibility first. Get less important components of your work first. Focus on satisficing as opposed to optimizing and observe the result.