If you can't have a glass of wine without "ruining three days of your life" (outside of substance abuse, of course), then how can you possibly market yourself as someone who is "optimized?" Whatever the hell that means, anyway. Everything in moderation. Love your take on this one, Brad.
Thanks, Justin. I think whenever anyone says they are optimized we ought to ask, optimized for what? Excellence almost always demands some level of flexibility and resilience.
Love it! And there's a parallel in football that maps.
A QB who refuses to throw unless his primary receiver is open won't last long. Instead he "checks down" and makes a short, safer-probability throw rather than taking a sack or forcing a contested throw.
When life covers your primary plan (the full gym session, the meal-prepped dinner, the perfect night's sleep) you don't just give up. You find the check down and keep driving forward. Your primary receiver is your ideal plan: 45 minutes of lifting, a full meal-prepped dinner, your planned 5-mile run, an optimal readiness score. The coverage is life: unexpected meetings, poor sleep, family emergencies, low energy.
The check down is the scaled-back but still productive alternative that keeps you moving forward. 15 minutes instead of 45. A decent meal instead of the planned one. A walk instead of the run. Not failure. A completed pass.
I've found in my 40+ years in fitness that the key is mostly check downs. It's mostly imperfect reps, decent-enough meals, and slightly tired training sessions. Because in reality, fitness is like walking up a down escalator. The moment you stop actively moving upward, you go back down.
Bad readiness scores, poor sleep scores, a couple of old fashioneds, none of that ruins anything. What ruins things is deciding that imperfect conditions are a reason to stop. That decision, made repeatedly, is the only thing that actually loses the game.
Love this metaphor. Especially because much like a good drive, a good life is often made up of a whole bunch of consistent check downs punctuated by some big plays.
As I was reading the start I immediately thought of the phrase “fear the golfer who hasn’t slept or is sick”
Glad to see you found the golf story! I have my own similar story, I pulled a literal all-nighter in high school and had a golf tournament at 9am. I played my Best round of the year to win the tournament.
I’m glad I didn’t have a bad sleep score or some metric to say it would be a bad day, cause all I knew was - let’s go play. No preconceived notions of how my performance would suffer that day.
Thanks for sharing, Philip. So many people have stories like that! Yes, obviously try to sleep well and control the controllables, but a lot of performance is a mystery and the worst thing you can do is create a self-fulfilling prophecy or fragility narrative.
Yes. Sleep is certainly important, and my job as a pilot there are zero upsides to being sleep deprived for focus on the operation. But i don’t let it impact the outcome of how I view my day.
Also realized you’re at Michigan, go blue! I live in AA - Might see you around
These are the conversations we need to be having! Life is RARELY perfectly optimized but you have to show up and complete the tackle anyway. Adapt or die!!
I stopped wearing my smartwatch except for runs (and the night before so I could have a silent alarm) and it’s been weird, but good. I did it because whatever poor metrics were being displayed were stressing me out. It’s been an interesting test.
Good luck! I know many people who have run a similar experiment and never went back. At the end of the day, these are all tools, and we each need to figure out what works best for us.
This is fantastic Brad and reminds me of an eating disorder which was cited first in the past twenty years - effectively an obsession with eating ''clean" food.
Life is not optimal and we rarely stop to consider who is benefiting from this tracking fetishism we have fallen into ... Companies who sell us apps, devices and supplements.
Fragility is a side effect. The deeper problem is we're addicted to resolution.
Optimization culture frames 'perfection' as the default state, which creates a mental model where struggle is seen as a system error rather than a feature of the human experience.
Now that we can measure everything, everything from sleep scores to HRV becomes something to perfect. If we can't perfect it, it becomes friction.
We’re becoming intolerant of friction because we’ve convinced ourselves that a 'perfect' resolution is possible.
The complaining and fragility is the result of holding a mental model that we should have zero struggle because everything should be optimized.
We're highly resilient, but we need to audit the idea that everything can and should be optimized to death
Great points, I agree. And I think that for many of us, this optimization culture is part of a deeper disconnection from our own selves, and a deep unworthiness issue. What do you think?
I recently got rid of my Fitbit, but paradoxically, I started planning for a new exercise routine that is not measured by data points that may or may not be super accurate, but by how I feel instead. Now that it's gone, I feel less pressure to get perfectionistic and feel down that I didn't get exactly 10,000 steps in or that I didn't do a workout even though my Fitbit was pinging me to do it. This article couldn't have come at a better time!
I tried wearing a device but found that it made me more anxious and stressed. So instead, I have learned to connect with my body and feel what I need. It may not be perfect but it works for me.
It can be hard to tell what your body needs without being informed by what science tells us it should need. But if humans survived and thrived for thousand of years without Fitbits, I guess I’ll be ok in the end :)
As a marathon swimmer, who has historically been exploring my capacity and only recently started to optimize my preparation, the fragility you mention strikes a chord with me.
It occurs to me that we optimize machines, but humans are not machines. We will never find out what we are truly capable of if we limit ourselves to what we can measure and monitor.
So true. I think we, as a society, has forgotten that being human is not just enough, it's a superpower. I am not against AI and optimization, but let's not forget who we are!
A wearable takes a vague feeling and hands you back a precise verdict. A number about yourself feels more authoritative than your own body, so you stop reading yourself and start reading the screen. By the time he'd "ruined three days," the wine was long gone. the score was doing the ruining.
Tell someone theyre at thirty percent readiness and they'll spend the day finding the evidence. The score stops describing the day and starts dictating it. A number you believe about yourself tends to come true.
What you did with the dull headache is the whole skill, you kept the verdict yours. A device can have an opinion. The moment it gets to decide whether you're allowed to feel fine, you've handed your day to a wrist.
Agreed. I’d love to read something about how to use your smart watch/wearable in the most productive way. Rather than allowing a bad score to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I have a drink almost every evening, run on cofein and nicotine, working night shifts and I'm doing just all right. What keeps me optimized against this lunacy is a hard training though. Daily. Exercise is such an equalizer.
I'm not sure I have been optimized for a single day since my son was born 10.5 years ago. But I'm also the strongest I have ever been at 41 because I show up anyway. Good luck to Bartlett if a family is something he is hoping for in the future!
Love and share the same sentiment as all of the comments on this post! It's definitely exaggerating to depend on a smartwatch to dictate your performance. So what if you had a bad night's sleep? That being said, and I don't know what optimization means by his standards, but drinking alcohol can (not always) have negative impacts on your life (all of us have unique experiences with alcohol consumption).
I don't know the podcaster, but it isn't the first time I've seen an article written about him. Alcohol consumption, as you mentioned, can be a good form of socialism, but the negative effects heavily outweigh the positives by a long shot. I think it's alright to assume alcohol had an impact on his performance, however, like the meaning of life itself, it's how you overcome adversity, and get control of the steering wheel during the days you slip.
If you can't have a glass of wine without "ruining three days of your life" (outside of substance abuse, of course), then how can you possibly market yourself as someone who is "optimized?" Whatever the hell that means, anyway. Everything in moderation. Love your take on this one, Brad.
Thanks, Justin. I think whenever anyone says they are optimized we ought to ask, optimized for what? Excellence almost always demands some level of flexibility and resilience.
Love it! And there's a parallel in football that maps.
A QB who refuses to throw unless his primary receiver is open won't last long. Instead he "checks down" and makes a short, safer-probability throw rather than taking a sack or forcing a contested throw.
When life covers your primary plan (the full gym session, the meal-prepped dinner, the perfect night's sleep) you don't just give up. You find the check down and keep driving forward. Your primary receiver is your ideal plan: 45 minutes of lifting, a full meal-prepped dinner, your planned 5-mile run, an optimal readiness score. The coverage is life: unexpected meetings, poor sleep, family emergencies, low energy.
The check down is the scaled-back but still productive alternative that keeps you moving forward. 15 minutes instead of 45. A decent meal instead of the planned one. A walk instead of the run. Not failure. A completed pass.
I've found in my 40+ years in fitness that the key is mostly check downs. It's mostly imperfect reps, decent-enough meals, and slightly tired training sessions. Because in reality, fitness is like walking up a down escalator. The moment you stop actively moving upward, you go back down.
Bad readiness scores, poor sleep scores, a couple of old fashioneds, none of that ruins anything. What ruins things is deciding that imperfect conditions are a reason to stop. That decision, made repeatedly, is the only thing that actually loses the game.
Love this metaphor. Especially because much like a good drive, a good life is often made up of a whole bunch of consistent check downs punctuated by some big plays.
As I was reading the start I immediately thought of the phrase “fear the golfer who hasn’t slept or is sick”
Glad to see you found the golf story! I have my own similar story, I pulled a literal all-nighter in high school and had a golf tournament at 9am. I played my Best round of the year to win the tournament.
I’m glad I didn’t have a bad sleep score or some metric to say it would be a bad day, cause all I knew was - let’s go play. No preconceived notions of how my performance would suffer that day.
Great article, Brad!
Thanks for sharing, Philip. So many people have stories like that! Yes, obviously try to sleep well and control the controllables, but a lot of performance is a mystery and the worst thing you can do is create a self-fulfilling prophecy or fragility narrative.
Yes. Sleep is certainly important, and my job as a pilot there are zero upsides to being sleep deprived for focus on the operation. But i don’t let it impact the outcome of how I view my day.
Also realized you’re at Michigan, go blue! I live in AA - Might see you around
These are the conversations we need to be having! Life is RARELY perfectly optimized but you have to show up and complete the tackle anyway. Adapt or die!!
Yes, essentially this! Performance isn't about control it's about being able to be in the moment with ruggedness and flexibility.
I resonate with so much of this piece as a human, but also as a teacher. I keep showing up, doing my best.
I stopped wearing my smartwatch except for runs (and the night before so I could have a silent alarm) and it’s been weird, but good. I did it because whatever poor metrics were being displayed were stressing me out. It’s been an interesting test.
Good luck! I know many people who have run a similar experiment and never went back. At the end of the day, these are all tools, and we each need to figure out what works best for us.
This is precisely why I got rid of my whoop.
This is fantastic Brad and reminds me of an eating disorder which was cited first in the past twenty years - effectively an obsession with eating ''clean" food.
Life is not optimal and we rarely stop to consider who is benefiting from this tracking fetishism we have fallen into ... Companies who sell us apps, devices and supplements.
Keep the main things the main things. Don't major in the minors.
Absolutely, and given the fact that the majors are often simple, boring and repeatable, learn to be okay with that!
Fragility is a side effect. The deeper problem is we're addicted to resolution.
Optimization culture frames 'perfection' as the default state, which creates a mental model where struggle is seen as a system error rather than a feature of the human experience.
Now that we can measure everything, everything from sleep scores to HRV becomes something to perfect. If we can't perfect it, it becomes friction.
We’re becoming intolerant of friction because we’ve convinced ourselves that a 'perfect' resolution is possible.
The complaining and fragility is the result of holding a mental model that we should have zero struggle because everything should be optimized.
We're highly resilient, but we need to audit the idea that everything can and should be optimized to death
Great points, I agree. And I think that for many of us, this optimization culture is part of a deeper disconnection from our own selves, and a deep unworthiness issue. What do you think?
I think you can have too much of anything in life. Food, drink, tv, phones, etc.
The optimization thing comes down to the individual. You’re going to hit a point of diminishing returns.
For me, I backed off when I was trying to track minutes of sleep and that worry led to less sleep.
I recently got rid of my Fitbit, but paradoxically, I started planning for a new exercise routine that is not measured by data points that may or may not be super accurate, but by how I feel instead. Now that it's gone, I feel less pressure to get perfectionistic and feel down that I didn't get exactly 10,000 steps in or that I didn't do a workout even though my Fitbit was pinging me to do it. This article couldn't have come at a better time!
I tried wearing a device but found that it made me more anxious and stressed. So instead, I have learned to connect with my body and feel what I need. It may not be perfect but it works for me.
It can be hard to tell what your body needs without being informed by what science tells us it should need. But if humans survived and thrived for thousand of years without Fitbits, I guess I’ll be ok in the end :)
As a marathon swimmer, who has historically been exploring my capacity and only recently started to optimize my preparation, the fragility you mention strikes a chord with me.
It occurs to me that we optimize machines, but humans are not machines. We will never find out what we are truly capable of if we limit ourselves to what we can measure and monitor.
So true. I think we, as a society, has forgotten that being human is not just enough, it's a superpower. I am not against AI and optimization, but let's not forget who we are!
A wearable takes a vague feeling and hands you back a precise verdict. A number about yourself feels more authoritative than your own body, so you stop reading yourself and start reading the screen. By the time he'd "ruined three days," the wine was long gone. the score was doing the ruining.
Tell someone theyre at thirty percent readiness and they'll spend the day finding the evidence. The score stops describing the day and starts dictating it. A number you believe about yourself tends to come true.
What you did with the dull headache is the whole skill, you kept the verdict yours. A device can have an opinion. The moment it gets to decide whether you're allowed to feel fine, you've handed your day to a wrist.
Agreed. I’d love to read something about how to use your smart watch/wearable in the most productive way. Rather than allowing a bad score to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
We need to spend more time seeking out friction in our lives. That’s where the growth is.
I have a drink almost every evening, run on cofein and nicotine, working night shifts and I'm doing just all right. What keeps me optimized against this lunacy is a hard training though. Daily. Exercise is such an equalizer.
I'm not sure I have been optimized for a single day since my son was born 10.5 years ago. But I'm also the strongest I have ever been at 41 because I show up anyway. Good luck to Bartlett if a family is something he is hoping for in the future!
Love and share the same sentiment as all of the comments on this post! It's definitely exaggerating to depend on a smartwatch to dictate your performance. So what if you had a bad night's sleep? That being said, and I don't know what optimization means by his standards, but drinking alcohol can (not always) have negative impacts on your life (all of us have unique experiences with alcohol consumption).
I don't know the podcaster, but it isn't the first time I've seen an article written about him. Alcohol consumption, as you mentioned, can be a good form of socialism, but the negative effects heavily outweigh the positives by a long shot. I think it's alright to assume alcohol had an impact on his performance, however, like the meaning of life itself, it's how you overcome adversity, and get control of the steering wheel during the days you slip.