Good Monday morning, friend.
I’m back after two weeks of vacation with my husband, and I have to tell you, it was a rest I deeply cherished. We travelled, ate good food, spent time near the water, laughed, slept, wandered, and had nowhere we had to be. After a very full season, I could actually feel myself coming back to myself. It was glorious.
One morning in The Hamptons, I was sitting outside with my coffee, looking at the ocean, and thinking how good it felt to have absolutely nowhere to be. No alarm. No rushing. No schedule pulling me into the next thing. Just coffee, ocean air, my husband nearby, and that rare feeling of being completely present.
Now, I should say this: I’m actually pretty good at going by how I feel.
I don’t need every workout tracked. I don’t build my life around a readiness score. I don’t track my sleep or count calories, and I probably weigh myself only a handful of times a year. I’ve become much more interested in asking, How do I feel? than What should I be doing today?
But every so often, even I can get caught up in the subtle pressure to be doing wellness “right.”
I reached for my phone and caught myself wondering how many steps I’d gotten the day before.
Then came the little mental checklist.
Should I work out before breakfast? Did I have too much ice cream and too many fries yesterday? Have I had enough water?
And I laughed.
Erica, are you seriously trying to optimize your vacation?
The funny part was that I already felt great. Rested. Happy. Peaceful. I didn’t need a number, a rule or a mental checklist to validate that.
I already knew how I felt.
And maybe that’s what struck me most.
Even when we’ve done the work of stepping away from hustle culture, there can still be these tiny moments when we forget that our bodies are giving us information all day long. Energy. Fatigue. Hunger. Restlessness. Calm. Joy. Sometimes the most useful data point is simply: How do I feel?
We have spent the last decade turning wellness into something measurable. Rings, watches, apps, sleep scores, readiness scores, step goals, streaks, macros, morning routines, evening routines.
And listen, I’m not anti-data. I use some of these tools too. They can be helpful, interesting and even motivating.
But I don’t want wellness to become another performance metric.
I don’t want to get so busy measuring whether I’m well that I stop noticing that I actually am.
And apparently, there’s a name for this growing desire to loosen our grip on constant tracking, hacking and improving:
anti-optimization.
When I first heard the term, I thought, Oh. I didn’t know this had a name.
Because I’ve already been living it my entire life.
And to me, anti-optimization doesn’t mean we stop caring about our health or stop wanting to feel our best. Quite the opposite. It is about remembering that feeling well and appearing to do wellness perfectly are two very different things.
Science has been nudging us in this direction for a while. Our nervous systems need periods of genuine recovery, not simply a different category of productivity. Chronic stress creates what researchers call allostatic load – essentially the cumulative wear and tear on the body when we stay in stress mode for too long. And interestingly, researchers have even identified something called orthosomnia, where people can become so preoccupied with perfecting their sleep data that the pursuit of better sleep actually creates more anxiety around sleeping.
We have reached the era where your sleep tracker can keep you up at night.
You have to admit, that is a little funny.
But it also points to something much bigger.
We cannot spreadsheet our way into peace.
I have spent years teaching self-care, burnout prevention and sustainable success, and one thing I believe more strongly than ever is this: self-care should support your life, not become another area of your life in which you feel you are falling behind.
There is a huge difference between asking, “What does my body need today?” and “Did I hit all my wellness targets today?”
One is a relationship with yourself.
The other is a report card.
And perhaps this is where so many high-functioning, achievement-oriented people get stuck. We know how to achieve. Give us a goal and we will attack it. So naturally, when wellness became mainstream, many of us approached it with the same mentality. Ten thousand steps. Eight hours of sleep. Thirty grams of protein. Meditation streak intact. Green smoothie consumed. Congratulations, you have successfully completed Thursday!
But the body doesn’t always work that way.
Some days the healthiest thing you can do is take the walk. Other days it is cancel the walk and sit on the porch with someone you love.
Sometimes wellness is strength training.
Sometimes it is tiramisu in Italy.
Okay, ideally with a little protein earlier in the day. I haven’t completely lost the plot. ?
The point is, we need to make room for embodied wellness, the kind you experience instead of constantly evaluate.
So as we head into a new week, here are five ways I’m thinking about practicing a little more anti-optimization.
1. Check in before you check your data.
Before looking at your watch or sleep score in the morning, ask yourself: How do I actually feel? Tired? Rested? Energized? Heavy? Calm? Your body is giving you information too. Technology should confirm or complement that conversation, not replace it.
2. Let some movement be completely unmeasured.
Go for a walk without caring how far you went. Swim because the water feels amazing. Dance in your kitchen. Stretch while watching television. Play pickleball because it is fun. Movement existed long before someone decided we needed a badge for completing it.
3. Stop turning every quiet moment into an opportunity for improvement.
This one is hard for ambitious people. We listen to the podcast while walking, answer the email while waiting, learn something while driving and consume while resting. Occasionally, try doing absolutely nothing productive. Look out the window. Sit in the sun. Let your brain wander. Boredom and mind-wandering are not wastes of time. They are part of how the brain processes, integrates and creates.
4. Choose consistency over perfection.
Well-being is not built through one immaculate morning routine. It is built through thousands of small choices made imperfectly over time. A ten-minute walk matters. Five minutes of breathing matters. Going to bed a little earlier matters. Calling the friend matters. You do not need to win wellness today.
5. Ask a different question.
Instead of constantly asking, “How can I improve myself?” try asking, “What would help me feel more alive today?”
That question feels different in the body, doesn’t it?
Maybe that is what my vacation reminded me of most. Life is not simply something to manage better. It is something to experience. There will always be another goal, another metric, another habit we could adopt and another version of ourselves we could theoretically become.
But there is also this version of you.
Sitting here.
On this Monday morning.
Already inside your life.
And maybe the next evolution of wellness isn’t about doing more for ourselves at all.
Maybe it’s about finally learning how to be with ourselves without constantly trying to improve the person who showed up.
So tell me, where in your life have you accidentally turned self-care into another form of pressure?
