Amen, 2027 we will see the rise of the anti-optimized self. A pushback to metrics-centric optimization perfectionism culture and a return to a more balanced life. 🤞
I think we'll definitely see pushback as more people begin to realize the unintended consequences of all the optimization. I don't necessarily know if it'll be 'balance' folks are after (as you know from my book, I don't love that term!) but maybe something more like heartfelt living, embracing the ability to handle uncertainty, etc. Will be interesting to see how it unfolds!
I think you make good points but I also believe you and others miss common reasons many people seek to optimize. Optimize may be the wrong word but I can’t think of another off the cuff. For some people who live under the pressure of life, work, family, etc. they need to maximize the effectiveness of the time spent training.
The other case, my case, I’m old as hell and I want to train well. It’s too easy to over train and risk injury and delayed recovery. So I need to understand how my aging body is responding. If I listened to the state of my joints, or my fatigue, I’d stay in bed all day. So if HRV or some other system can help, I need it.
I can appreciate your point about data saturation, but rather than rail against data overload, give us some wisdom on how to make our training more effective and useful for whatever our goals are, especially for those of us who were never uber athletes, us who want to continue to climb mountains, XC ski, backpack, to avoid being a burden.
Marshall -- it's great to hear from you and thank you for your thoughtful points. When it comes to training for sport, I really try to think about this in the simplest way: are the tools (and tracking) helping or hurting your goals. You can go tool by tool and ask yourself, is this stressing me out? Is this holding me back? Am I less in touch with my body because of it, or, is it protecting me from myself? What I like about this exercise is that it often changes, because the tools that work work great, until they get in the way. For the longest time, doing video analysis on my deadlift was genuinely helpful. But eventually, my form was as good as it was going to be, and I needed to trust myself and not get in my head about micro-adjustments, lest it would hold me back. So that's an example of a tool I used until I didn't! Lots of runners do the same with things like HR. For instance, use it to train, then take it off at the end of a race when it's time to race. I am not arguing against measurement and tracking as a whole, just that we go about it with intention and evaluate not just the benefits but also the costs, realizing the balance may change for us over time too. And then yes, some people track and optimize every part of their lives, and for those folks, I think shedding would go a long way. As I said to someone earlier, we can't turn ourselves into machines! Performance (and life!) is too full of mysteries. See the discipline chapter of The Way of Excellence and the story about the Beatles, for example. And keep climbing, skiing, and backpacking!
I traded my whoop for a $20 Casio watch and it's been one of the better decisions for mental/spiritual and I'd argue physical health too. I think analog will continue be a gift for many who find themselves lost in the slog of performance metrics
This will resonate with a lot of folks. Myself included. I just returned from a trip abroad and a main takeaway was how I could still live a full life and feel great, despite sub "optimal" sleep, nutrition, workouts, etc.
I hate the word optimal now too, haha. It is a complete sales tactic. Just live life, do things that fire you up, be a good person. The rest will figure itself out.
The main advantage that Bryan notes is that frequent low cost scans give you a useful baseline of data, so at your annual physical, you have something to compare to. He would argue, and I would agree, that the body changes a lot year over year, and it is hard to establish a meaningful baseline on merely a yearly basis.
Is it possible for most people to get frequent data updates without spiraling into self obsession? That seems like the best solution, but i don't know how feasible it is.
Your question is a good one and I don't have a clear-cut answer. A few concerns about frequent scanning:
1. False positives that lead to anxiety, more testing, maybe medical error (e.g., biopsy gone wrong).
2. Incidental findings: things that you never knew about and would never have known about or caused issues that now you know about and feel the need to do something about, which could lead to anxiety and medical error.
3. Ensuring you scan only for things you can actually do something about; if you learn you have a terrible dementia slowly brewing but there is no treatment, I'm not sure the value of learning that is positive versus negative.
All of that said, let's say there was a blood biopsy that could detect cancer with great accuracy, I would probably take that blood test every 3-4 months. A fast-growing cancer at Stage 1 is very different than at Stage 3 or Stage 4.
But for me personally, repeated full body scans carry too much risk of #1-3 above.
the enhanced self trap is real. once optimizing becomes identity, every baseline human moment starts feeling like a bug. the good life probably has to include some unoptimized edges or it turns into a spreadsheet with better lighting.
Yup, well said. If let to run to the full extreme, optimization turns you into a machine and you start to treat yourself and your life like a machine and it's not good for health (ironically) but it also isn't good for performance! Especially as AI comes online, what separates us and what will be not only an advantage for the soul but a competitive advantage in the world of work will be our messy, humanness!
And it's never enough, because there is always some higher standard to compare to. (even if that higher standard isn't real, or cheats, or is an AI generated chest or sick-pack, etc, etc.) We've got to keep our comparison points constrained and local, to people (or organizations) we know and who are playing the same game we are.
I wonder if our obsession with optimization stems from a misunderstanding of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and how he defined self-actualization. Self-actualization can easily be mistaken as reaching the pinnacle of optimization, but I love that you included Csikszentmihaly’s work, pointing to flow, peak experiences, and egolessness. It’s interesting that self-actualization is more so found outside the self.
Great point. I think about self-actualization as the harmony between working toward improvement and then letting go. Optimization over-indexes on the former to the point where it crowds out any time and space for the latter. All measurement and tracking isn't bad, in fact, it's good! But it shouldn't be the thing/end. It should be a means to the thing/end, which is living a good life, connecting, contributing, excellence, etc.
I love this take on self actualization. Maslow himself eventually added upon the hierarchy of needs, stating that self actualization was not the true pinnacle of human experience, but rather Self Transcendence—moving beyond the self to a greater purpose. Perhaps there’s a middle ground, a point where you can practice continuous self improvement while striving to turn outward, seek connection.
That’s a great point! Didn’t know Maslow later added Self Transcendence; that’s such great framing. I think you’re right, it’s finding that middle ground.
Such a great point! Our optimization as a means is only as good as the end it strives toward and contributes to. Awesome read Brad, thanks so much for your writing!
I really appreciated this article particularly in a part of it how it reminds me of words in the chapter 'goals' where its instructed to judge yourself by how present you are in exerting your level of effort in each moment more than being so attached to the result itself. A "process over outcomes mindset" is something I've stretched out abit more for myself additionally as a psyche and way of being and what registers with that which I link to the article is : if life is supposed to be its best and most fulfilling and deepest there's likely a pace in which it supposed to unfold which is likely not rushed as this would be a pace one could be attentive AND content in. Thanks for the message in this article Brad
Process over outcomes is not just a mindset shift, it's a nervous system shift. When you're attached to the result, the body is already living in a future that doesn't exist yet. That's the opposite of flow. But when you drop into the pace you described, the brain actually works better. 🧠🙏🏼
Yeah and thanks for saying this..there's an instructiveness about this as well as there is a humbling in that F can't truly happen before D and B and the like in the thick of things..I've found it character-altering
Love this post. I often find myself wondering what value my Whoop or Oura has actually given me over the years — have they really moved the needle in any meaningful way? Sure, Oura tells me I need to go to bed earlier to optimize tomorrow’s recovery. But I’ve also been somewhat begrudgingly reckoning with how much time I’ve sunk into these products and their data.
Side note: this piece also reminded me of a quote by Suzuki Roshi on being fully present in any activity: “When you do something, you should do it with your whole body and mind; you should be concentrated on what you do. You should do it completely, like a good bonfire. You should not be a smoky fire. You should burn yourself completely. If you do not burn yourself completely, a trace of yourself will be left in what you do.”
Sooo interesting to read this perspective as it’s in complete contrast of how I live my life. I guess I can see why some people would turn to constant tracking devices as it gives them accountability & most likely keeps them on track towards a goal. But I’ve never felt the need & never really understood it. Whatever happened to just doing something to feel & enjoy the entire experience? The world saw the disconnection people have developed to their bodies; themselves, saw that as a gap in the market & a chance to create devices as a way to ‘help’ people gain connection to themselves. I measure the impact of doing something by the felt experience in my body. I have never felt a need to track anything: sleep, food, exercise, work. I measure everything based on the felt sense in my body. It’s a knowingness & connection to myself that lets me know if something is working or not, when to keep pushing & how to identify what needs pursuing or not. I have barely any tech devices in my life & spend as much time in nature as possible. Aliveness in life & connection to life itself is best ‘optimised’, when people are in full presence to their felt sense & the full experience to life in the present moment & all the range of emotions that come with it. And that how I measure life optimization- by how it feels & how I’m experiencing it & relating to it on a daily basis.
Thanks for sharing this Brad so interesting to see the other side of the way people aim to optimise their lives.
Great read, Brad! Chasing the metric can end up wrecking the thing the metric was supposed to measure, losing yourself in the process. Showing up, doing the work, not checking the score every twenty minutes is usually what actually gets people the outcome they wanted from the metric in the first place.
Throwing away the ring is bad advice dressed up as wisdom. Mine didn't fail me — it told me something I didn't want to hear. Two glasses of wine, a "harmless" long nap, and my sleep score falls apart. That's not noise. That's a body talking, and I finally had something honest enough to translate it.
Same with followers. Pretending audience doesn't matter is easy when you've already got one. I sent out fifty-plus queries to literary agents. One bothered to respond — James Clear's agent, and even that went nowhere. So I decided to hybrid-publish, which means I'm tracking followers across platforms all the way to launch, on purpose, because that number is the difference between a book that finds readers and one that doesn't. Tell me again how metrics are the enemy.
And here's the part that actually pisses me off about this piece: it treats tracking like it's all the same category — vanity numbers and biological reality lumped together like they're equally disposable. They're not. I just found out I have the beginning of celiac disease. Cut gluten, and now I'm tracking energy, sleep, and heart health against that change, on top of strength and cardio three to seven times a week. The blood test told me what was wrong. The ring is telling me if what I'm doing about it is working. Throw that away because it makes you anxious and you're not transcending the self — you're just flying blind and calling it enlightenment.
I'm 66, in better shape and health than 99% of people, and I intend to keep it that way. That doesn't happen by accident. It happens by paying attention to the inputs, not looking away from them.
I write about this in my own book, The Input Effect — a chapter called "The Blood Speaks First: Listening to the Body Before It Shouts." The data doesn't lie. The moment you stop running from it is the moment it might save your life.
Steve Martin had it right: "Be so good they can't ignore you." Not achieved by throwing your instruments in a drawer.
Terry Vermeylen — author of The Input Effect: Master What You Control, Maximize What You Get
Amen, 2027 we will see the rise of the anti-optimized self. A pushback to metrics-centric optimization perfectionism culture and a return to a more balanced life. 🤞
I think we'll definitely see pushback as more people begin to realize the unintended consequences of all the optimization. I don't necessarily know if it'll be 'balance' folks are after (as you know from my book, I don't love that term!) but maybe something more like heartfelt living, embracing the ability to handle uncertainty, etc. Will be interesting to see how it unfolds!
Totally agree! Thanks for the comment :)
I think you make good points but I also believe you and others miss common reasons many people seek to optimize. Optimize may be the wrong word but I can’t think of another off the cuff. For some people who live under the pressure of life, work, family, etc. they need to maximize the effectiveness of the time spent training.
The other case, my case, I’m old as hell and I want to train well. It’s too easy to over train and risk injury and delayed recovery. So I need to understand how my aging body is responding. If I listened to the state of my joints, or my fatigue, I’d stay in bed all day. So if HRV or some other system can help, I need it.
I can appreciate your point about data saturation, but rather than rail against data overload, give us some wisdom on how to make our training more effective and useful for whatever our goals are, especially for those of us who were never uber athletes, us who want to continue to climb mountains, XC ski, backpack, to avoid being a burden.
Marshall -- it's great to hear from you and thank you for your thoughtful points. When it comes to training for sport, I really try to think about this in the simplest way: are the tools (and tracking) helping or hurting your goals. You can go tool by tool and ask yourself, is this stressing me out? Is this holding me back? Am I less in touch with my body because of it, or, is it protecting me from myself? What I like about this exercise is that it often changes, because the tools that work work great, until they get in the way. For the longest time, doing video analysis on my deadlift was genuinely helpful. But eventually, my form was as good as it was going to be, and I needed to trust myself and not get in my head about micro-adjustments, lest it would hold me back. So that's an example of a tool I used until I didn't! Lots of runners do the same with things like HR. For instance, use it to train, then take it off at the end of a race when it's time to race. I am not arguing against measurement and tracking as a whole, just that we go about it with intention and evaluate not just the benefits but also the costs, realizing the balance may change for us over time too. And then yes, some people track and optimize every part of their lives, and for those folks, I think shedding would go a long way. As I said to someone earlier, we can't turn ourselves into machines! Performance (and life!) is too full of mysteries. See the discipline chapter of The Way of Excellence and the story about the Beatles, for example. And keep climbing, skiing, and backpacking!
I traded my whoop for a $20 Casio watch and it's been one of the better decisions for mental/spiritual and I'd argue physical health too. I think analog will continue be a gift for many who find themselves lost in the slog of performance metrics
I've worn an Analog watch for a long time and I love it.
This will resonate with a lot of folks. Myself included. I just returned from a trip abroad and a main takeaway was how I could still live a full life and feel great, despite sub "optimal" sleep, nutrition, workouts, etc.
I hate the word optimal now too, haha. It is a complete sales tactic. Just live life, do things that fire you up, be a good person. The rest will figure itself out.
More or less, this is the way. Simple, but not always easy!
Thanks for this piece, Brad. The part about orthosomnia is especially relevant to many people today.
I struggle to reconcile the ideas here with the ideas that Bryan Johnson (lol) just posted about, about the new Midjourney scanning technology
https://x.com/bryan_johnson/status/2069221309918351661
The main advantage that Bryan notes is that frequent low cost scans give you a useful baseline of data, so at your annual physical, you have something to compare to. He would argue, and I would agree, that the body changes a lot year over year, and it is hard to establish a meaningful baseline on merely a yearly basis.
Is it possible for most people to get frequent data updates without spiraling into self obsession? That seems like the best solution, but i don't know how feasible it is.
Your question is a good one and I don't have a clear-cut answer. A few concerns about frequent scanning:
1. False positives that lead to anxiety, more testing, maybe medical error (e.g., biopsy gone wrong).
2. Incidental findings: things that you never knew about and would never have known about or caused issues that now you know about and feel the need to do something about, which could lead to anxiety and medical error.
3. Ensuring you scan only for things you can actually do something about; if you learn you have a terrible dementia slowly brewing but there is no treatment, I'm not sure the value of learning that is positive versus negative.
All of that said, let's say there was a blood biopsy that could detect cancer with great accuracy, I would probably take that blood test every 3-4 months. A fast-growing cancer at Stage 1 is very different than at Stage 3 or Stage 4.
But for me personally, repeated full body scans carry too much risk of #1-3 above.
the enhanced self trap is real. once optimizing becomes identity, every baseline human moment starts feeling like a bug. the good life probably has to include some unoptimized edges or it turns into a spreadsheet with better lighting.
Yup, well said. If let to run to the full extreme, optimization turns you into a machine and you start to treat yourself and your life like a machine and it's not good for health (ironically) but it also isn't good for performance! Especially as AI comes online, what separates us and what will be not only an advantage for the soul but a competitive advantage in the world of work will be our messy, humanness!
Absolutely, this quest for top 1% is not only impossible, it is simply comparing ourselves to others, incessantly.
That constant comparison, eats the joy of living like a ravenous beast.
And it's never enough, because there is always some higher standard to compare to. (even if that higher standard isn't real, or cheats, or is an AI generated chest or sick-pack, etc, etc.) We've got to keep our comparison points constrained and local, to people (or organizations) we know and who are playing the same game we are.
Agreed!
I wonder if our obsession with optimization stems from a misunderstanding of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and how he defined self-actualization. Self-actualization can easily be mistaken as reaching the pinnacle of optimization, but I love that you included Csikszentmihaly’s work, pointing to flow, peak experiences, and egolessness. It’s interesting that self-actualization is more so found outside the self.
Great point. I think about self-actualization as the harmony between working toward improvement and then letting go. Optimization over-indexes on the former to the point where it crowds out any time and space for the latter. All measurement and tracking isn't bad, in fact, it's good! But it shouldn't be the thing/end. It should be a means to the thing/end, which is living a good life, connecting, contributing, excellence, etc.
I love this take on self actualization. Maslow himself eventually added upon the hierarchy of needs, stating that self actualization was not the true pinnacle of human experience, but rather Self Transcendence—moving beyond the self to a greater purpose. Perhaps there’s a middle ground, a point where you can practice continuous self improvement while striving to turn outward, seek connection.
That’s a great point! Didn’t know Maslow later added Self Transcendence; that’s such great framing. I think you’re right, it’s finding that middle ground.
Such a great point! Our optimization as a means is only as good as the end it strives toward and contributes to. Awesome read Brad, thanks so much for your writing!
I really appreciated this article particularly in a part of it how it reminds me of words in the chapter 'goals' where its instructed to judge yourself by how present you are in exerting your level of effort in each moment more than being so attached to the result itself. A "process over outcomes mindset" is something I've stretched out abit more for myself additionally as a psyche and way of being and what registers with that which I link to the article is : if life is supposed to be its best and most fulfilling and deepest there's likely a pace in which it supposed to unfold which is likely not rushed as this would be a pace one could be attentive AND content in. Thanks for the message in this article Brad
Process over outcomes is not just a mindset shift, it's a nervous system shift. When you're attached to the result, the body is already living in a future that doesn't exist yet. That's the opposite of flow. But when you drop into the pace you described, the brain actually works better. 🧠🙏🏼
Yeah and thanks for saying this..there's an instructiveness about this as well as there is a humbling in that F can't truly happen before D and B and the like in the thick of things..I've found it character-altering
Love this post. I often find myself wondering what value my Whoop or Oura has actually given me over the years — have they really moved the needle in any meaningful way? Sure, Oura tells me I need to go to bed earlier to optimize tomorrow’s recovery. But I’ve also been somewhat begrudgingly reckoning with how much time I’ve sunk into these products and their data.
Side note: this piece also reminded me of a quote by Suzuki Roshi on being fully present in any activity: “When you do something, you should do it with your whole body and mind; you should be concentrated on what you do. You should do it completely, like a good bonfire. You should not be a smoky fire. You should burn yourself completely. If you do not burn yourself completely, a trace of yourself will be left in what you do.”
Sooo interesting to read this perspective as it’s in complete contrast of how I live my life. I guess I can see why some people would turn to constant tracking devices as it gives them accountability & most likely keeps them on track towards a goal. But I’ve never felt the need & never really understood it. Whatever happened to just doing something to feel & enjoy the entire experience? The world saw the disconnection people have developed to their bodies; themselves, saw that as a gap in the market & a chance to create devices as a way to ‘help’ people gain connection to themselves. I measure the impact of doing something by the felt experience in my body. I have never felt a need to track anything: sleep, food, exercise, work. I measure everything based on the felt sense in my body. It’s a knowingness & connection to myself that lets me know if something is working or not, when to keep pushing & how to identify what needs pursuing or not. I have barely any tech devices in my life & spend as much time in nature as possible. Aliveness in life & connection to life itself is best ‘optimised’, when people are in full presence to their felt sense & the full experience to life in the present moment & all the range of emotions that come with it. And that how I measure life optimization- by how it feels & how I’m experiencing it & relating to it on a daily basis.
Thanks for sharing this Brad so interesting to see the other side of the way people aim to optimise their lives.
Great read, Brad! Chasing the metric can end up wrecking the thing the metric was supposed to measure, losing yourself in the process. Showing up, doing the work, not checking the score every twenty minutes is usually what actually gets people the outcome they wanted from the metric in the first place.
I like Kelly Starrett’s boner test. If you wake up with a boner, you’re healthy. If you don’t there’s a problem.
Disagree. Hard.
Throwing away the ring is bad advice dressed up as wisdom. Mine didn't fail me — it told me something I didn't want to hear. Two glasses of wine, a "harmless" long nap, and my sleep score falls apart. That's not noise. That's a body talking, and I finally had something honest enough to translate it.
Same with followers. Pretending audience doesn't matter is easy when you've already got one. I sent out fifty-plus queries to literary agents. One bothered to respond — James Clear's agent, and even that went nowhere. So I decided to hybrid-publish, which means I'm tracking followers across platforms all the way to launch, on purpose, because that number is the difference between a book that finds readers and one that doesn't. Tell me again how metrics are the enemy.
And here's the part that actually pisses me off about this piece: it treats tracking like it's all the same category — vanity numbers and biological reality lumped together like they're equally disposable. They're not. I just found out I have the beginning of celiac disease. Cut gluten, and now I'm tracking energy, sleep, and heart health against that change, on top of strength and cardio three to seven times a week. The blood test told me what was wrong. The ring is telling me if what I'm doing about it is working. Throw that away because it makes you anxious and you're not transcending the self — you're just flying blind and calling it enlightenment.
I'm 66, in better shape and health than 99% of people, and I intend to keep it that way. That doesn't happen by accident. It happens by paying attention to the inputs, not looking away from them.
I write about this in my own book, The Input Effect — a chapter called "The Blood Speaks First: Listening to the Body Before It Shouts." The data doesn't lie. The moment you stop running from it is the moment it might save your life.
Steve Martin had it right: "Be so good they can't ignore you." Not achieved by throwing your instruments in a drawer.
Terry Vermeylen — author of The Input Effect: Master What You Control, Maximize What You Get
Love it. Thanks Brad