Optimizing Is No Longer HealthMaxxing
In other words, worrying too much over the little details is killing you faster than not worrying at all.
There’s a meme going around that says, “Men used to go to war.”
The crux of the joke is that the even the most arduous of demands were not even a second thought a few decades ago.
Now, there is a culture of hyper-fixating on small, inconsequential things that some might argue are softening us — and I don’t think it applies only to men, either.
Optimization Culture, which focuses on maximizing everything about your day, from the morning routine to the very last flickers of your eyelids before you go to sleep, has gotten out of control.
At first, the goal was admirable — to improve “healthmaxxing,” or maximizing your health’s potential — but the niches formed around each piece of optimizing have become too much to handle.
Quitting alcohol was a great start. Recent alcohol industry numbers show sales and general interest in drinking and nightlife are way down, which I think led many to believe that a movement could form from advocating for subtracting vices.
Some optimizers pushed for cancelling subscriptions, quitting smoking, scrolling and other bad habits to help improve stress levels, sleep, and relationships.
I think the practice of subtracting was where the trend should’ve halted. Taking things away allows for clarity and better understanding.
But whoever pioneered these trends ushered in a wave of new salespeople to take the hull.
A common understanding of human psychology reminds us that those who have bad habits (or are addicted to something) often don’t eliminate the habits or addictions altogether — they replace them with something else.
Whether or not the replacement is a healthy one is what I’m focusing on this evening.
Where Optimizing Went Wrong
What came into the fold of health optimization after the abstinence movement — a personal favorite highlight was “Raw Dogging Flights” — was a host of substitute activities that achieved the inverse of optimization.
