The “Optimized” Life is a Small Life

There’s one word that, in the last few months, or I guess that I’ve really noticed since the beginning of the year, or at least it’s when it really jumped into my consciousness and started grating on me (besides ‘quiet/quietly’), and that is optimize (or optimization). It seems like everyone is trying to optimize every single part of their lives: their days, their relationships, their jobs, their time, their…everything.

Reclaiming the wonder of being ‘unproductive’ is a necessary shield against the burnout caused by the productivity-industrial complex. By rejecting the pressure to ‘habit stack’ or ‘biohack’ every waking moment, we allow ourselves to exist as finite humans who can simply stare at the steam from a coffee cup without a goal (like trying to figure out when the best (or most optimal) time is to drink said coffee).

In the running podcasts I listen to, even they are talking about stuff like ‘habit stacking’ – doing something ‘good for us’ at the same time as doing something else. Like doing calf raises while we brush our teeth. Or doing lunges while you’re making your Nespresso coffee. Trying to cram multiple things into one as much as we can.

We can’t just brush our teeth anymore. We have to be doing yoga poses at the same time apparently.

Or we’re trying to ‘biohack’ (what?) our way into being the perfect human being.

I keep seeing the word biohack everywhere lately, usually said with the same confidence someone might use to describe repairing a spaceship engine. I looked it up, thinking it must be something complicated or vaguely sci fi, but it really just means: tinkering with your body or mind in hopes of becoming a more “optimized” human being. Things like adjusting your sleep schedule, wearing a gadget that tattles on your heart rate, cycling through cold plunges and saunas to rejuvenate your system, or taking supplements with names that sound like they were pulled from a comic book.

In its gentlest form, biohacking is basically:

“What little habit could I try today that might make me feel marginally better?”

Which is fine. It sounds doable. And good, even.

But somewhere along the way, it drifted into this Silicon Valley flavoured idea that our bodies are malfunctioning apps in need of constant updates and patches. That if we’re not tracking, measuring, stacking, or optimizing something at all times, we’re somehow falling behind, we’re doing life wrong. It’s wellness disguised as a software upgrade, and… just seeing the word now makes me tired.

But wonder doesn’t live in a spreadsheet; it lives in the inefficient, the unplanned, and the slow. The real. We’re not all Arnold Swarzennegger in The Terminator. Maybe we will be in 100 years, but not now (thank you very much!).

So I’m calling out the so-called “productivity-industrial complex” that makes us feel guilty for a morning where we just stare at the steam rising from a coffee cup as we look out our windows without a “goal.” I want to just brush my teeth, thank you very much, not practice standing in tree pose at the same time.

We need to reclaim the wonder of being so-called ‘unproductive’ (or, even just normally productive). Just doing one thing at a time. We’re not circus performers. We don’t need to juggle balls and flame throwers while riding on the back of elephants and doing backflips at the same time.

We need to just get back to one thing and a time and not trying to change everything about us all at once. It’s fine to have goals, and want to change an improve. But we don’t need to change ourselves into super humans. Unless we want to be cast in the next Marvel movie.

What do you say? Optimization of ourselves and our lives is probably just a fast track to Burnout Town. Let’s take a breath, take a step back and try to un-optimize (de-optimize?) ourselves as best we can.

And take things a step at a time.

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