Optimization culture is killing us

Optimization culture has gone too far and it is spiritually killing us. Stephen Bartlett posted a video that he had a few glasses of wine and it ruined the next three days of his life. His sleep score was off, he ate poorly, and couldn't go to the gym. Now take it from me, a reformed optimizer, I logged my activity for three years straight. When I woke, what I drank, whether I exercised, I tallied this up at the end of the year. But for what? A moral superiority that I drank less or that I exercised five and a half days a week? We need a 90 sleep score, 10,000 steps a day, a bed cooled to 68 degrees, six miles on Strava, all for us to be better at sending emails or talking on a podcast. We have gummies for sleep, supplements for stress, nicotine for focus, all for the promise of a better, happier self. We've been optimizing for years, yet somehow we are more isolated, more anxious, and less happy. So maybe what we need is three glasses of wine with our friends, a conversation of economically unproductive laughs, and a slice of 2am. Maybe we need to sleep in a day, miss the gym, so that we can remember what it feels like to feel both dead and alive. Because ultimately, life is felt through contrast. We have surrendered ourselves to the tyranny of measurement and forgotten what it means to live.