The tyranny of optimisation and why your apple watch won’t fill the void
‘Yep. That’s my always be optimising part.’
This is what a client said to me recently to describe what she increasingly saw as a destructive pattern - continuously searching for defective parts of herself which could somehow be optimised. Diet, sleep, exercise, productivity, skills, performance, physical appearance, mental wellness, impact - when we view life as a machine to be tweaked in a desperate attempt to somehow get more out of it, then sure enough we’ll find no shortage of bolts to tighten or parts to grease. But where does it all end? What’s the point at which we get to enjoy things as they are? When are we sufficiently optimised? Will I be judging my final day on earth based on my apple watch (or whatever comes to succeed it) telling me if I got my 10k steps in or not?
I sure as hell hope not!
I do believe that optimisation can be a great force for good and that growth and change is really what defines us. The problems arise though when optimisation itself becomes an ill-defined ideal which we’ll never live up to - when the apple watch becomes not just an interesting data point to inform, but the rod with which we beat ourselves with. Think of all the poor lost souls miserably continuing their Duolingo streak; any embers of desire to learn the language long since extinguished, but left with the need to always be optimising nevertheless.
This is what I previously described as the wolf in sheep’s clothing of the self-improvement industry. The thing that is packaged as a healthy desire for change but so often compounds the underlying sense that we are somehow deficient to begin with. The truth, in my view, is that you are most likely doing just fine, and the work that is yours (and mine) to do, is simply to see that truth clearly.
So my invitation to you if you’re reading this is to stop focusing on your deficiencies for a moment and to ask yourself two simple questions:
What’s one thing about me that is whole and complete exactly as it is?
What’s one area in which optimisation might not be serving me right now?
I hope that helps you break free from the tyranny of optimisation if only for a moment.
