I’m in the business of helping people get better: feel better, think better, perform better. But I have to be honest: the modern quest for self-optimization is starting to feel a bit nauseating. This coming from someone who helps high performers in sport and the military squeeze more juice out of their efforts.

On one hand, it’s completely reasonable, even admirable, to look for ways to improve in service of your craft or your community. On the other, our increasingly obsessive focus on ourselves may be taking us further from where we actually want to be.

The Optimization Economy

We’ve got superfood green drinks, red lights, coffee that can stop bullets, and exotic adaptogens that promise to neutralize stress. You’ve got your fair trade, safe-for-sport certified, organic, non-GMO teas and coffees (mushroom mixes for those too good for coffee), protein powders, and supplements. Add in specialized compression shorts, motorized massage tools, and electric shock recovery gadgets that “get the garbage out.” And don’t forget the apps! Track your sleep, track your steps, track your food, track every beat of your damn heart.

Getting these things in order can be disorienting and overwhelming. Excessive attention to them risks turning us into fragile, self-centered, windbags blowing out the latest podcast recommendation we heard to our poor relatives at Christmas dinner.

To be totally forthcoming here, I have probably tried and recommended most of the above list. And further still, I’ve been guilty of being “optimized” for performance and at the same time, a selfish asshole.

I’m not saying you can’t be deeply interested in health and at the time be a good person. Of course you can.

That said, what I often observe in modern health optimization culture is nothing but a masquerade ball. People wear costumes that make them look and sound like the part, but it doesn’t seem like there’s anything deeper behind it.

Some of this problem can be laid squarely at the feet of the commoditization of health. Early in my career, a business-savvy client told me three things always sell: health, wealth, and sex. The health market captures billions of dollars each year by promising that if you take the right supplement and understand the right biomarker, everything is fine and that any lingering unease is simply a problem of insufficient data.

We sell self-help, self-esteem, self-love, and self-optimization. We read books and subscribe to newsletters. That adds up to a lot of focus on the self.

SELF(ish) Optimization

Recently, I’ve been reading Dostoyevsky’s novels and, along with that, learning more about his life and influences. One thing that stood out to me is that the main character in Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov, gets his name from the Russian word raskól, which means “to split.”

In the novel, Raskolnikov commits a murder in an attempt to act out a theory of his own exceptionalism. But as the story unfolds, that internal split deepens. He becomes ill, overwhelmed by guilt, and increasingly disconnected. His thoughts turn erratic, his inner life destabilizes, and his world begins to collapse inward.

More precisely, raskól refers to a kind of schism; a separation of a person from their moral grounding, their community, and their sense of coherence. In Eastern Orthodoxy, it ultimately describes a split from God. I’m not a believer, but the longer I sit with this idea, the more psychologically accurate it feels.

This isn’t to say that if you take creatine or use red lights you’re anything like Rodion Raskolnikov. That would be ridiculous.

But it has made me think more deeply about optimization culture in general, and as a result, a question keeps cycling in my mind:

Is it self-optimization we’re after, or is it self-image optimization?

I suppose we each must answer that for ourselves.

Thanks for reading,

Rob