Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:16] Speaker B: Welcome to but why Real Talk on Messy Minds and Messier Systems, the podcast where two psychologists over analyze everything so you don't have to. We're here to unpack the weird, the worrying and the wildly unjust with just enough existential dread to keep it interesting. I'm Dr. Kristen.
[00:00:31] Speaker A: And I'm to Laura. And let's dive into the mess.
[00:00:34] Speaker B: Let's do it.
[00:00:35] Speaker A: So today, well, we're talking about a topic I wanted to talk about for a while. So this is over optimization and really like why we treat ourselves like machines. So we're going to explore the drive that we have to optimize every part of our lives from our productivity to our sleep cycles to our routines, even our time for rest and our hobbies. So we're going to unpack kind of where these impulses come from, who it serves, what it takes from us, and also explore how we reclaim our humanity within all of this in a world that is trying to turn us into efficient systems.
But before we do this, I wanted to. Okay, so kind of small talk, but this is, I think this is actually big talk actually.
So I was on like a CPD yesterday, so a philosophy kind of CPD with Aura Goldman, who is amazing in this workshop. She presented to us a lot of like, what do you call them? I suppose, scenarios in a way, like philosophical scenarios.
And I wanted to ask you one of them. So one of them was right.
So if you, if your brain, uh oh, is replaced. Right. So your brain's taken out but it's replaced with an identical brain. Right. Are you still the same person?
[00:02:04] Speaker B: How would it be identical if it's not the same brain?
[00:02:08] Speaker A: Oh, interesting. Okay, so I suppose I was thinking of this like it has all the same stuff in it. So I guess maybe it has like all of the same memories and the same knowledge and stuff as you, the same experiences.
[00:02:22] Speaker B: So it's not like if you were a twin and you got your twins brain because obviously then you're not the same person because they've had a different life.
But then, oh God, I don't know that really. That tags into kind of obviously what you think about the soul.
And yes, I don't think you're the same person. I think you might function similarly or the same.
But I don't think you can be.
I. Oh, how dare you throw this at me on a Friday.
Thought you'd love it. You had time to reflect on this? What do you think?
[00:03:00] Speaker A: I know and I. Well, okay, so one of the things we were kind of talking about was like, what is you?
So, okay, so you get your brain's replacement, identical one. Are you still you? Like, well, what. What is you? What makes up you?
You know what I mean?
And then I kind of started. We started kind of. We were in little discussion groups and we were talking about, well, whose perception of you is it? So, for example, if I have had my brain, like, transplanted or whatever, and do I feel like I'm still me? Like, maybe I do, but maybe. I don't know, maybe my behavior's changed a bit, and to someone else it doesn't look the same. Or maybe I inherently feel in myself that I'm not the same person. Maybe I know that my brain has been replaced and I'm like, I know that I'm not me, but to someone else, maybe I look exactly the same. So to someone else, I might still be me, but to me, I may not be me. So who is it important to and whose perspective is it coming from?
[00:04:04] Speaker B: Well, I think it's always going to be important to you as the person whose brain has replaced has been replaced. I think that's where. For me, that's where the question would derive from. And who you are as a person is your brain and your experiences and, you know, the positives and negatives that have developed your behavior patterns, unconscious and conscious.
See, we're all made of, you know, basically collections of matter that always. Stardust. Yeah, stardust. I was gonna say that, but I was like. I don't want to sound like a little fairy, like, witch lady, which I.
But, like, essentially we are all made of this. Like this matter that's all existed. So technically, even if your behavior is the same, you might have the same thoughts, even emotions. It's different matter that's in your brain and in your head guiding that.
So that's what kind of makes me think, like, maybe, like, even though you might be the same, you're not the same. Do you know what I mean?
[00:05:09] Speaker A: Yes.
Yes, that makes sense to me. And I like to think about it as it made me think about. Have you seen the film Swan Song?
It's on. I think it's on Apple tv.
[00:05:19] Speaker B: I'm so disappointed. Just that you look so disappointed.
[00:05:24] Speaker A: I enjoyed it. It's not. It's not like the best film moment in the world, but it's got this scenario. Really. I don't know if this is spoilers. So if you haven't seen this and you want to maybe, like, skip on a minute, because I don't know if I'm Giving away spoilers. But basically, there's this guy who finds out he's ill and makes the decision to clone himself and to send his clone back to his family. His family don't know that he's been cloned, but of course he knows that he has. And there's this period of transition where the clone goes to be with his family whilst he's basically at this facility and he's really ill and, like, kind of waiting to die.
And it's like, to his family, that clone is him. He's exactly the same, all the same experiences and everything.
But of course, to the original guy, he knows that that's not him. And so to him, that's threatening. That's weird. It's obviously not him.
So, again, it's like, the perspective, I think, piece is interesting there. And then, like you say, even though he's been clothed and technically exactly the same, he's made up of different matter. He's made a bit of different stuff, so.
[00:06:40] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Have you seen the Prestige?
[00:06:44] Speaker A: Yes, a long time ago.
[00:06:45] Speaker B: It's like that. So, like, obviously, to do his magic trick, he's just cloning himself over and over and over. And then he knows that he's going to be the one who has to die in the next one, and then he's going to be cloned. And that. That just makes me. That this could open up a whole can of worms. Like, how many times he cloned himself and how many times. I think I'm getting it right, that he, like, had to die and then reclone himself each time. Like, how far away removed are you from that original person?
Or are you the same?
Oh, God. Maybe we need an episode on that. Oh, my gosh.
[00:07:18] Speaker A: I think, yeah, we need to do an episode about this.
[00:07:20] Speaker B: That's a really interesting one. Yeah. Guys, let us know in the comments.
What do you think about this question? I mean, we didn't even really get into the, like, the proper philosophy behind it, like, how you construct human identity. Do you know what I mean? Like, because I take quite a constructivist approach, but I think that's a whole. We'll save that for the episode. Because I feel. Yeah, I feel like this was more.
[00:07:44] Speaker A: Like, what are you doing? Who knows?
Yeah, Love this stuff, though. I do love, like, these philosophical questions. All right, so with this in mind, I suppose, how do I segue?
[00:07:57] Speaker B: How do you segue into.
Well, I feel like a good way to segue is, like, the questioning of the human experience, which is what our podcast is. Is a very human thing. To do.
Whereas what we're engaged in a lot of the time in our lives is very like, in my opinion, anti human. This over optimization is very anti human.
So there you go.
[00:08:21] Speaker A: Machines we're turning. Are we turning into machines? Let's find out.
[00:08:26] Speaker B: Is that your ad voice?
Yeah, I think so.
[00:08:31] Speaker A: Apparently I have one.
So yeah. Okay. So going back to then, this idea of over optimization, and like I said, this is something I've been thinking about a lot. There's actually a podcast I listen to, what's it called, the Wellness Scoop, which my sister introduced me to, and it is fantastic. But it takes this kind of perspective mostly in terms of health and nutrition. But are we over optimising our lives? When is there almost just so much misinformation and noise that we actually end up making decisions that aren't good for us?
So anyway, it made me think about this, I suppose, in a broader sense. And why do we have this drive, I guess, to over optimise? And what are we almost missing out on if we are doing this?
So what we wanted to do, I guess to start is talk a little bit about the origins of this culture of over optimization because I think we all kind of feel almost this need that we need to be productive all the time. But where does this actually stem from?
So we can go back really to the Industrial Revolution when we think about this?
This idea of optimisation didn't just start with your wellness apps and your trackers and things like that. It started back in the Industrial revolution when our value as human beings was really tied to our productivity and our output, how efficient we could be within our jobs. So if we think about workers who were being measured by how quickly they could assemble, how quickly they could deliver what they needed to, and then over time this external measurement became really internalized into us as humans. So we learned to treat ourselves like machines, that we need to always be better, like do things faster, be able to go for longer. Right.
And we almost like miss out on the beauty of going slow and the benefits within that. So we all feel like, yeah, better equals faster.
More productive has to mean that we are doing things more quickly, able to go for longer, and so on.
[00:10:57] Speaker B: So what you're saying is capitalism is taking away our humanity, essentially.
[00:11:03] Speaker A: Tell me more.
[00:11:06] Speaker B: No, we don't need to get into that, that necessarily right now, unless you want to. I just, I feel like, you know, that's, that's just my reflection on it because you said about the Industrial Revolution and that's, that's where capitalism was already, like, kind of starting to take effect. But that's what really just made it quicker. Like it was happening a lot quicker. And, you know, we kind of like went away from, you know, monarch rule to more. The people with the most money that they get in capitalism are starting to get a lot more power. And so you're not taking power from some divine right of God, you're taking power from money. Money's the new God in this society, isn't it? So that's how you're going to get ahead. And if you can turn people into as efficient as workers as possible, it makes sense whether this is done consciously or subconsciously at the time, to start treating people like machines. And you see this since the Industrial revolution with art. So if you look at almost the decline of a lot of what's kind of now, I'm not. This isn't talking about artists and things like that. I'm talking about, like, infrastructure art that we have in our systems. So if you look at, you know, public buildings in Europe from, like, before the Industrial Revolution and how beautiful the architecture is and the paintings they have, and. And so that's why they still have all these very beautiful cities. And then now the stuff that's been built since, like, the 60s and 70s, even before that, the 50s, even like from the 1900s onwards, you see less and less and less humanity in our architecture, in our art that's accepted in, like, system. Now, again, not talking about the people. So we still have some amazing, very creative artists. But what's shown to people, like, think about street lamps. Street lamps that were made 200 years ago have, like, beautiful, like, leaves on them and they're like, cool. I don't know, like, they're like a cool design. Whereas now they're just like these metal black things with a light bulb. Do you know what I mean?
[00:13:12] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:12] Speaker B: Like, our government buildings are no longer having, like, these beautiful paintings on the ceiling. They're just cement blocks. Even looking at, like. Yeah, if you. Even if you look like at a McDonald's from the 90s and there was like the playpen and like the. All these colors and all that kind of stuff. Even though, like, the clown was real creepy, at least there was like a personality to it. And now you look at a McDonald's and it's again, just like a cement block. So I just see, like, you can just kind of track it.
[00:13:43] Speaker A: That's so interesting. I'd never thought about it like that. And I, where I went to, I went to university in York and They have like a campus uni and that was all kind of built I think like around the 60s and it is just loads of concrete blocks and it is beautiful there in its own way, but you still notice that concrete. And like you say there's almost, there's not, there's not the like same humanity in it. It does feel like you've just got this new material and you just want to get something built as quickly as possible. And that is now what you are favouring over actually thinking about design and aesthetics and kind of things like that.
[00:14:24] Speaker B: Yeah, and like this when you were talking about self improvement is now it used to be the self improvement was philosophy and art and all those kinds of things and now it's more into like individual optimization. And if we're going to encourage these individuals to self optimize then we need to not take any distraction, we need to not distract them with their environment.
It's just like a shift in what's prioritized of how we want to display our humanity.
[00:14:54] Speaker A: It's like the, let's just get the job done and move on to the next thing rather than really putting our passion and soul into the individual tasks we're doing. And of course some people, yes, we still have that.
I think it seems to be more and more though that that isn't our job. You know, like our jobs tend to be. We're on that conveyor belt, we're quickly trying to tick things off, get things done and then the passion is almost on the side. We're putting that creativity more into it.
Yeah, I guess you hear a lot of people talking about trying to turn their passions into their jobs and I think it kind of comes down to this sort of thing. Right. It's like I just kind of want to be free and do something that I'm enjoying rather than being forced to just be productive like all the time.
[00:15:47] Speaker B: Which is so anti human. Like if you look back at before we started, but basically when we were in our initial kind of groups as human beings, hunter gatherers, before we started farming and property became a thing which kind of kicked off, you know, the patriarchy and all these other kind of like issues in society, we worked very little hours out of the day and spent the rest of the time doing very human things like telling stories, doing art, talking, gossiping is how we might term it because we like to problematize human beings talking. A lot of the time, you know, just napping, enjoying nature. And there was very little time spent working because working was like making sure your Food, shelter, water, all that was secure. But in a group community of about probably 50 to 150, that didn't take that much time for so little needs for that amount of people.
[00:16:50] Speaker A: So it's the, I guess working culture in a sense has just completely shifted.
[00:16:57] Speaker B: Yeah. And you can see it in the very little funding the arts and humanities have. I mean, even when I was a kid, there was massive cuts to it. And I know that's still happening.
Becoming an artist is now seen as like a pipe dream instead of a realistic career, which is just very, very sad.
[00:17:17] Speaker A: It's almost like kind of. As well, I can see that there might be pushback in terms of art and the self expression. You know, thinking about kind of the political space we're moving into nowadays that actually art ends up being used as this. Yeah. Expression of free speech in a way. And I feel like maybe people are not afraid, but perhaps there are almost negative connotations that might go along with it in terms of that. But actually the power, like the power that is in like art and creativity, but it seems to be squashed somewhat.
[00:17:59] Speaker B: But that's exactly the point is these kind of fascist, very conservative kind of ideologies and regimes are very threatened by our humanity.
That means that they're also very threatened by art and kind of almost like natural scientific process, philosophy, things like that. And so they always try to quash it because the second you start engaging in your humanity more, you realize how much it's been taken away from you. And that leads to some. Some people call it radicalization, but really it's just kind of like, kind of being able to stick your head outside of the bubble of the system a little bit and look at what' almost been done.
So.
[00:18:41] Speaker A: Yeah, and that's almost like what we were talking about with Oliver. Right. Like a couple of episodes back. So that bubble cracking or being able to. Yeah. Put your head outside of that system and being able to see kind of what's happening.
[00:18:54] Speaker B: Totally. So along those lines, right now we're in an area where we're in late stage capitalism.
And capitalism, think about the Industrial revolution where it really kicked off. It demands growth, infinite growth. The growth cannot stop.
And that mindset has just really bled into our lives. So firstly, bad for the environment. We all know that that's why we're having an environmental crisis. But it's also our personal experiences, like we all have some internalized beliefs that if we're not improving, we're failing. And this has kind of even gotten down to like the very like the smallest aspects of our lives. So even like on our aura rings that we have, if our sleep score isn't improving, then we're bad at sleeping. So even rest is becoming like something to measure and like for it's useful to a certain extent. Right. If you don't have these internalized beliefs like oh shoot, I only got six hours of sleep last night, that's not good, I need to keep track of that. Or I wasn't sleeping well, why? But when it becomes like a measuring stick, that's the issue. So I think we're now in this kind of stage where we're trying to like optimize our hobbies and our habits and the things we like to do for fun, which art, which used to be a full on career, is now a hobby, you know what I mean? And I think it would be useful to briefly talk about where this came from. Have you ever heard of neoliberalism?
[00:20:24] Speaker A: Like I've heard of it, but I don't really know what it means.
[00:20:27] Speaker B: So people hear the word neoliberalism and tend to think it means something to do with like liberal, like as in leftist democrat. That's not, it's completely separate. So it's like not democratic, it's not democracy. It's just a term for where we are right now that's separate from like that kind of political ideology. We are currently in what I like to call a neoliberalist hellhole.
And basically the responsibility for everything has shifted to the individual rather than that group context. Like we briefly mentioned about how we were evolved to do.
And this happens, you know, in the 70s, 80s is when it started to kick off where instead of fixing the broken systems that we like to talk about a lot.
So like healthcare, protections for workers, things like that, the focus very much became to fix yourself. And the system basically just tells us to, you know, meditate more, use your headspace apps like work out harder, track your cycles, which is a whole other thing about control.
Buy the right supplements, like and you can see how these all tie into capitalism. These are all individual things done by a system, but you have to buy them. Okay, so this shift wasn't just natural, it was very deliberate restructuring of society. In the 70s.
So if we're looking at post war, there was a, we were all kind of united, especially in like in the western worlds at least there was very, it was a lot of economic consensus around like kind of just the working class. So lots of organized labor, lots of unions formings and people just kind of realizing actually this kind of like, this has been escalating a lot. Workers deserve rights, things like that.
But this became a massive threat to elite power. So remember how I said, like, money is king now we don't have any more monarchs, but we're starting to get millionaires and billionaires that are starting to rule the show at this point. Big power players like Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan recognized that dividing people in the working class on the basis of other things like class, race, citizenship, morality, etc, would minimize working class resistance. And that's kind of where you get these culture wars from.
So if you're seeing yourself as an individual, your in group becomes much smaller. So last episode on defensiveness, we talked about in groups and how you're more likely to defend your in group. But if you have a collectivist approach, you've got a much bigger in group, you've got your whole community. If you think of yourself as an individual, your in group becomes your family, your close friends, you know, that kind of stuff. And so removing these basic protections manufactured a culture war that increased the threat response that we talked about last episode and increased the need for you to perform, to survive.
And, you know, the essential idea of neoliberalism is that you are a product, you are your own. Like, it started out as like this cool, like, marketing thing, like you are your own product that you can sell. But if we break it down, if you're a product, you're not a person, you're not a human being.
So, yeah, what are your thoughts on that?
[00:23:54] Speaker A: You know what this makes me think about?
It makes me think about football, like how the players maybe, maybe kind of particularly, I guess at like an academy kind of level.
They are really.
Who said it? Someone said it to me the day. Like how often they're termed as assets or, you know, products. They take the human away from these young footballers and they're just thinking about how much money can they get for them at the end of the day.
And often, not always, but often, like these academy structures say that they really value, you know, the development of the players from, you know, like a personal and human perspective. But actually when you see what's actually happening within those systems, that really is not what's happening.
So I guess it made me think about that and how even though despite, you know, football being about the team, it kind of ends up being the responsibility of that individual to, yeah, develop, to optimize, to make the most money for the team they're with, otherwise they're just going to get dropped and they're Just going to get kicked out of the door. And that is where this threat, this survival for people within systems like that is so high.
[00:25:19] Speaker B: I literally wrote about that exact thing in my mental health and football paper where we're treating people, especially if you're thinking like academies, we're treating these young boys like products. And that also impacts how you treat them. Not just how they feel about themselves, but it. Your, your treatment towards a product is different than how you might treat a human. And that almost leads to like.
So it used to be community care would help with mental health and you know, kind of well being and child care and, and things like that. But if you're looking at, especially taking the football aspect, the only reason a lot of clubs hire a psychologist is because now mental health has become a commodity and not a right. So it's a commodity to help improve performance.
It's not necessarily.
I mean, I will caveat this by saying, like many people within these systems care.
Right now what we're talking about is the system itself because we're in these systems and they are all fueled by capitalism, neoliberalism, things like that. So there are many people working in these systems that do genuinely care, but the system doesn't. If you don't, if you're not performing, you're out. And the reason the organization has decided to bring in these people is not to improve their nutrition just for fun. It's not to improve their physical health just because they want them to feel better mental health, not because they want them to kind of like experience better mental health. It's all for performance and longevity and things like that.
[00:27:02] Speaker A: And you get that pressure as well then going on to say the staff within the system, right? So then it's like actually the coach is told that they need to take a developmental focus, but actually they know if they don't win at the weekend, then they're gonna potentially be out the door. So like it everybody, even though we may be striving towards this more human perspective and supportive perspective, like I say, we are all ultimately kind of under the thumb of that system that we're in.
[00:27:36] Speaker B: And think about how isolating that is, especially for like taking the analogy of that coach that you used, if you know that you have to do one thing but also the other that are contrasting things or you're out, think about how isolating that is and confusing and how much that fuels competition between people. Because however you strike that balance, it's going to be you that's there that can feed your family or it's going to be you that's there that can feed your family with this role and progress in your career. And so it really works to further isolate people, the system rather than allow. The more that the system allows us to form community, the more threat there is because that's when we gain regain back some of this humanity that we were talking about. And that's exactly what we were talking in previous episodes. Like if our in groups become bigger, then then that's a massive threat. And that's why this whole thing is here. That's why they're creating gender wars right now. And like, I just want to pinpoint a few things that neoliberalism.
Ugh. Neoliberalism has called caused. Oh my God.
So starting where we kind of fit in. And something that's a big pet peeve of mine is mental health has now become like a product and not a process of life and it's become medicalized for profit. Think about the pharmaceutical companies.
So any like overwhelm or burnout or anxiety that is a natural result of the systemic issues that we talk about all the time, like climate change and affordable unaffordable housing. Social issues, isolation, capitalism.
Rather than it being a community thing or a systemic issue, it's your issue. It's an individualized issue that you need to go see a counselor. You need to get on this medication. Same thing with loneliness. So it makes self reliance some kind of trophy that you have. Like, oh, I'm an independent woman.
Great on one hand because that's getting you away from patriarchy. But on the other hand, we should be able to form community.
Neoliberalism thrives by dividing people because that's what they need to stop the working class from fighting against. Kind of the billionaire class, which that's what they call class consciousness. I don't know if you've ever heard the term.
[00:30:00] Speaker A: No.
[00:30:00] Speaker B: So class consciousness is essentially like the working class gaining like a more mass community consciousness to kind of the systemic oppression by like say billionaires, the people in power.
Because we have this weird thing in our society where people naturally think that billionaires are somehow better or smarter. There's like this weird thing, like think about the way people used to at least think about Elon Musk, like, because he was a billionaire, everyone's like, he's so smart. He's blah, blah, blah for no, no reason. He didn't actually do. He didn't invent anything, blah, blah, blah.
So yeah, class consciousness is this like more collective understanding of what's happening. And neoliberalism caused the decline of public services. So it's not a coincidence that all of these happen at the same time. So universal childcare in the states had bipartisan support in the 60s or 70s, I can't remember. And it was squashed by Reagan on his desk because he knew that if you had women in the workforce and you kind of like stopped these oppression of one people, then you would normalize the genders working together and things like that. And you would also lose a lot of the free labor that you get. Privatization, deregulation, hollowed out system, systems that kind of help us as humans, like education, health care, affordable housing.
Reagan and Thatcher were pretty much the biggest, kind of like biggest players in this. They crushed unions, they defunded public goods and services, infrastructure became super privatized. So like now people have to work to access what most like, if you, if you're not kind of stuck within the system, would consider a basic human right. And this is how we got to where we are now. Where you kind of talked about earlier is work. Your job is your identity, you are your job.
And almost like if you're not burnt out, you're not doing enough.
[00:32:00] Speaker A: Yes. I feel like this is the narrative that is so often sparked and also perpetuated by stuff online. Right. We see people doing things all the time. We feel the pressure like we need to be doing the same.
And it also made me think when you were talking about, I guess this how we are, the pressures put on us as the individuals is like, I guess for outside of sport, of I guess these academy settings, just in our job roles. Right. It might be advocated by the company that you work for to rest and to look after your mental well being, but like we said, they're not necessarily going to be doing anything about that. That's going to be on you. But we know that, okay, if I take, I don't know, like some mental health days, I'm going to be really behind. People aren't going to think that I'm pulling my weight. So there is this whole other like social pressure and demand then on top of that.
So we're kind of constantly fighting against those things.
[00:33:07] Speaker B: Definitely. And yeah, it's almost like it's never going to be enough because it requires this constant improvement and the systems aren't designed for that, the environment isn't designed for that. And us as human beings certainly aren't designed for that. So it doesn't matter how many apps we have. I feel like I went through a period where I was like, I'M not doing enough to improve myself. I'm not feeling great. Maybe I'll download like a mindfulness app. I'll get back onto my like Apple watch and record all my workouts. I'll get on this other app, like the couch to 5k running app. I will track my meals and like, I probably had like four or five apps going at once. All that I was paying for to try and like make me a more productive, better person. And this is all outside of working full time. Like, I feel like we're all offering enough to society by working full time and many people are working overtime. Why do we feel like we need to now techno, like use technology to make ourselves so much better, even just in our eye off time.
[00:34:19] Speaker A: Totally. And. And this thinks into something I came across kind of when we were like almost planning for this episode and this idea of something called the quantified self movement.
So this took off like in the early 2000s. And it's basically this idea that data can improve human performance and make us more productive. So I guess when you were saying about your Apple watch and things like that.
So whether it's is your Apple watch, your oura ring, apparently there are even smart beds which collect data on your sleep, which I did not know was a thing, but that sounds crazy.
But ultimately we're using technology to be introspective for us. Right? So instead of us being able to turn inwards, ask ourselves questions, how am I feeling today? You know, we are actually saying, what does my watch tell me about how I'm feeling today? So we're almost like losing this ability to be introspective, to reflect on.
Yeah, how are we actually feeling? And we're putting that up to the technology instead. And we often talk about this, don't we, Kristen, in terms of our like, aura rings. It's like sometimes I think the other day mine told me I was like 90 plus on my readiness, but it was also saying that I had minus, like signs of like strain.
[00:35:46] Speaker B: And I'm like, how does.
[00:35:47] Speaker A: How does that work? But then it's like me asking myself, well, actually, how do I feel today? But we end up thinking, oh, the number says I'm really high, so I must be able to do loads today. But actually that, that may not be the case. We still have the number one say over how we feel on any given day. But this, I suppose, quantified self like movement ends up. It kind of creates this illusion that we have control over these metrics, but it's also adding to this Dehumanization and yes, stopping this kind of embodied experience that we might get and just turning into graphs and readiness scores instead.
So I guess instead, well, I guess we kind of start asking, what can I measure and optimize instead of what do I need to feel whole?
[00:36:39] Speaker B: And I think this is actually a conversation I've been having online with a few people because with the control that's now being enacted over women using, say like tracking fertility rates and things like that, and some, like, older women online are like, you idiots, like, why would you put any of that in, like on the Internet? And blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, okay, lady, we are not here to blame the women who were sold this package. We were, we were huge. Blame the systems and the people trying to control them. And I think a lot of these apps are actually sold to us, like you said, as a means of control. Like, we all have an innate fear of, of dying, don't we? So like, we're gonna do everything we can to optimize our health.
And also, like, in a world where we just don't understand or have control over a lot, I feel like these apps can offer like, okay, well, you do have maybe some control over your sleep or what workouts you're doing or whatever, but I also think they're very much packaged that way. So they're not packaged. If, like, if you tried to sell me, I know there are apps like this, but me or anyone in the general population, if you try to sell like Headspace as like, become the best mindfulness person on the planet, know your mind better than anything, instead of like, this can help you with your well being, this can improve your self awareness. Or like, if you do the same thing with like, like a fitness tracker, it's like, you will become an athlete or, or else, like, you will become the. But no, no one cares about that. They just want to like, like be healthy. Do you know what I mean? And so these things are packaged in a cute little bow to make people feel like they're just contributing to their own well being, when really it's contributing to them measuring themselves against previous and future versions of themselves in some way.
[00:38:37] Speaker A: That's so interesting. The previous and future versions, right?
And it's again, it just adds to this whole comparison. We're comparing ourselves from last month to this month. The Oura Ring gives you quarterly reviews basically of how you've been doing. Oh my God, it's terrifying when you see how long you've been sitting down for. And I'm like, oh, my God, this is awful. And while, yes, of course it's better if I am more active and move around more often, so.
[00:39:09] Speaker B: But how are you supposed to do that?
But like, how are you supposed to do that? We both have office jobs for the most part. Exactly.
I was yelled at many times by my ring yesterday because I had to get through all this marking, grading papers, and I just was sitting down all day. What am I supposed to do? There's a deadline. Do you know what I mean? So it's making people feel guilty for something that they don't actually have so much control over.
[00:39:36] Speaker A: Totally, yes. And I guess this kind of leads into this idea of like, what optimization then looks like for us today.
So I feel like kind of what we've touched on, it might be us tracking ourselves with these kind of devices, but it might even be like, you know, we're tracking our steps. Some people might be counting calories, like you said, cycles, sleep scores and so on. It can also be like kind of almost stepping away perhaps from the tech side, like even turning relationships and like leisure activities or even like parenting into things that need to be efficient products. And again, we're taking the human out of this. It's like, actually, how can we be like, say, like the perfect couple or have the perfect relationship?
And we might see what this looks like online, I suppose.
[00:40:30] Speaker B: And yeah, that just made me think of like, even taking it a step further is like, we are products online. So everyone has their Instagram page or their TikTok where they're presenting what their relationship looks like. And if it's not perfect, if it doesn't measure up, then that impacts their mental health and things like that. And so, like, not, not only are you doing this kind of like internally and impacting yourself internally, you're also a product on the market of like, your own, your own page.
[00:41:00] Speaker A: Totally, totally. And I think what I always find hard is it's that when does this, I guess, when does trying to help ourselves in a healthy way become this over optimization? Because yes, of course, it might be useful if online we see, I don't know, like, relationship advice or something about how, how we can be healthier. But when does that turn into when we were almost like over fixating on, you know, what we need to fix and be better at. And I think it's kind of interesting if we look at this in a perspective from a therapeutic setting.
So almost how, if we are, say, going to a psychologist, going to a therapist, like getting counseling, how we tend to be going to see that person to try and fix ourselves. And I think it's almost like, well, yeah, of course that's why you would be going because something's not quite right and you want to get better. But actually when is that just more of this self optimization or over optimization that we're forced into?
And it almost made me think, is this sometimes why therapy fails? Is it because sometimes we go into therapeutic spaces and we're expecting a fix to come out a brand new person, but actually it's about going in and accepting ourselves for the person that we are.
[00:42:24] Speaker B: That's, that's such good insight. And I feel like it ties really well into almost how therapy and anything that's been medicalized is approached from that deficit perspective.
So like you said, we're trying to fix something that is broken in heavy quotes. Rather than like develop ourselves as human. You have to wait for there to be a problem with the machine to even get there in the first place. And that's how we're all trained to think. And then like, once that thing is fixed, then you're, you've accomplished therapy. Check mark, like, and you don't need to go again until the little brain machine's broken again. Like, it's, which for me is like daily.
But I, I just think it's real. It's a really sad way to approach humanity. And that's why I know you and I are big proponents of like, you don't have to like more preventative focus on any kind of health in terms of, in therapy, that's like organizing your life in a way that's beneficial to you. Physical health, same thing totally.
[00:43:25] Speaker A: And, and I think this then, like, it shows to us like the psychological toll that this can then have. So this idea of we need to be perfect, we need to fix everything, like you were saying earlier, the loss of like the creativity and even potentially like the joy in what we're doing when everything becomes a metric. And this got me thinking about how we then enter like a very rigid mindset.
So this is opposed to psychological flexibility, which is something that I am often helping clients to move towards in the work that I do.
So the idea of psychological flexibility, so being able to be present, to accept like uncomfortable thoughts and emotions, take committed action that's in line with our values and what we care about. But actually we end up moving away from that because we end up moving instead towards this very rigid view of what we feel like society wants from us, rather than being creative and moving towards what we care about.
So it's almost like we seem to be forced to do things that we think we should be doing or have to do in order to stay fit, to stay healthy, to be successful and all of this stuff.
And that means that we can end up engaging in really rigid thinking and really rigid behaviors.
Yeah. And I remember it wasn't long ago, it was in a therapy session I was in and I can't remember why we did it, but I ended up writing down kind of all the areas of life that I felt like, almost like needed to be perfect in. And it was like all of these things. It was like health, it was like skincare, it was relationships, it was work. And it was all of these different spaces in my life where I was feeling like I had to over optimize and perfect them for some reason.
And like if something wasn't perfected then I wasn't doing something right. And that overwhelming feeling that everybody else is doing this perfectly apart from me, which is just so, you know, not true. I think everybody probably feels this, this way. But then there's that kind of spiral if you like, of never feeling like we're good enough despite I guess trying our best to like do everything right. And that can be so exhausting.
[00:46:03] Speaker B: Well, exactly. Like what does that encourage? That encourages you to be more, more productive until you're completely burnt out and you're of no use. And it for like firstly getting rid of like the moral aspect of it. It's, it's really stupid from a structural point of view because if you're looking after your workers in heavy, heavy quotes and they don't burn out, crash out of the system, you know, die from long term stress, whether that's like from, from health issues, mental health, things like that.
[00:46:36] Speaker A: Japan.
[00:46:37] Speaker B: Yeah, but that's why they're more worried about.
This is gonna take a bit of a turn, but it's related.
This is why they're trying to get control over.
Yes, drop yourself in. This is one of the many reasons that they tried to keep this class consciousness from forming is so that they can keep the poorest at that level and keep the most control over them, keep them having babies. That's why they're trying to take away women's rights is because they know the system is bad for the working class.
They don't give a they because people are going to keep having kids. If you don't educate people, if you don't provide them with contraception or means of birth control, things like that. And then you again don't educate their kids. They're just going to become a worker that funds your business. Do you know what I mean? Because they don't actually care. That's why there's, like the saying, there are no ethical billionaires. Because what you have to do to get to that stage is really inhibit the lives of so many people.
And so, like, when you have this now, the ones that are here right now didn't create the system, but they're a big part of it. You know what I mean?
And so when you are constantly having feeling like, well, I'm not fulfilling, like, I'm not perfect like everyone else. I'm not doing this in my relationship, in my business, and this and this and this and this, and my Instagram page does it looks I've not been on holiday for a while to show this. And you burn out.
And, you know, the. The amount of people that die from chronic stress in one way or another is huge. They don't care.
So, yeah, that was a bit of a tangent.
[00:48:20] Speaker A: No, not at all. Because I think it comes back to this idea of who is all of this serving it? Surely, like you say, at the end of the day, we're burnt out, we're stressed, we perhaps feel like hopeless. Like, what are we going to do next? How do we meet this unrealistic standard?
And so who is it serving? It doesn't seem to be serving ourselves a lot of the time.
[00:48:43] Speaker B: No, it's not.
[00:48:45] Speaker A: No, no. So I suppose the question is then, like, how do we reclaim this human part of ourselves? How do we kind of, like you were saying before, how do we, like, poke our head outside of this bubble and recognize that some of, probably not all of the behaviors, but some of the things that we're engaging in actually aren't going to be serving us and helping us. So how do we figure out, like, I suppose, the purpose behind what we're doing?
And I think in terms of, like, reclaiming this humanity. And I am talking to myself as I say this, because this is, like, what I need to do.
[00:49:24] Speaker B: This is also our therapy session, guys.
[00:49:27] Speaker A: I'm. Yeah, that's exactly what this is.
So I think it comes down to somewhat. And this is so difficult, and I don't even know if this is possible, but letting go of perfectionism, and I think perfectionism, I don't know.
I have a whole thing with perfectionism, but I think it's more, let's let go of it and reclaim the messiness. Right? Like we talk about here, like, we're all messy. We're within messy systems. Let's allow ourselves to be messy.
Let's allow ourselves to tap back into what we find pleasurable. Let's tap back into stillness. Let's tap back into, like, just being.
And I always come back to this idea kind of from, like, mindfulness around getting out of this doing mode and stepping into being. And that can be very uncomfortable. Like, we always want to do something. At least I do. Yeah, but how can we kind of step out of that and just be. And, like, not stressing because, say, a workout wasn't as good or our metrics weren't as good as, like, we wanted them to be that day, but actually just doing the thing for it being the thing, you know, embracing, like, choice as well. So actually, if I go, let's take the gym again. I go to the gym and, like, you know, I'm just gonna have a light session today.
Embracing that, like, embracing. I'm gonna eat this chocolate. I'm not gonna have that. That banana, like, trying.
[00:50:55] Speaker B: Always the right choice, to be fair.
[00:50:57] Speaker A: Always the right choice. Exactly. But for some reason, society tells us, actually, no, you should probably not eat that. So.
[00:51:03] Speaker B: What do you mean, for some reason? We know the reason. We know the reason. You know the reason.
[00:51:07] Speaker A: We just got it for, like, 45 minutes.
So I think for me, it's. It's again, it's an awareness piece. It's like the choice piece is like, can we be conscious, I suppose, in what we're choosing to do and step away from that automatic machine thinking that we get stuck in?
And I think this can look like if we engage with practices that are centering, like I said, being overdoing. So what this might look like is things like being bored. How much fun. Let's all try and be bored.
I was really thinking, I can't remember who I was talking to the other day, but talking about how when I was a kid, I was bored all the time. Like, I needed constant entertainment. But, like, I don't. I couldn't. Couldn't really tell you, like, the last time I felt bored, you know, because it's like we're always picking ourselves up and going and doing something. We're always reaching for our phones with. You know what I mean?
[00:52:07] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:52:08] Speaker A: So actually, can we create space to be bored and kind of sit with that? Can we daydream? Like, sometimes I love just, like, being in the car and, like, not having anything on and just letting my mind just go where it wants to go. And I think we miss this because we live in such a busy world, because we are Always trying to optimize ourselves. It's like, oh, what can I squeeze into this five minutes that I've got free before my next meeting? Literally sitting there. You're not just going to sit there and be with yourself and your thoughts.
You're going to be trying to do something productive. But maybe we need to shift that and again, make the choice to use that five minutes to actually just be.
[00:52:50] Speaker B: I think that's a really important characterization because the world is designed for us to not make that choice, to keep doing all this stuff without making a choice. Like, if we have that five minutes, we might spend that. Rather than either we're going to be doing something productive, get a couple emails done, whatever, or we're going to be scrolling on TikTok or Instagram to get the dopamine hit that we desperately need because we're so burnt out. And what's on Instagram and stuff like that, it's ads. It's still all very much focused that way. And, Laura, I feel like you've come such a long way because I remember having this conversation with you about a year and a half ago, because after my autism diagnosis, I realized this. That was one of the reasons I was so burnt out, is because of everything we're talking about. Talking to you today about today. It was like around two years ago, I started to pop my head out of this bubble and realize, like, this is. This is what's going on. Like, okay, I got it from a theoretical perspective, but I actually was able to see, like, how it has impacted me. And I don't know if you remember, I took, like, two weeks off of work to try and rest. The first thing I did, literally on my first day off, I woke up, I had my coffee, and then I wrote a list of everything I needed to accomplish in the two weeks that I didn't have time to do. When I was working, I was like, I need to get this done in the garden. I want to get this done in this room, and blah, blah, blah. And then afterwards, I was like, yeah, that's. That's what I'm trying not to do. Kristin, stop. Like, I'm so. Yeah, I wanted to. I think that your characterization is. You have to be conscious of it and literally have to force yourself to make time for it, otherwise it won't happen.
Is totally true. And it can feel so uncomfortable because you can feel like you're. You should be doing something. There's like, this underlying sense of urgency and guilt.
[00:54:42] Speaker A: Oh, my goodness. Yes.
[00:54:44] Speaker B: And I think maybe about a Year ago, we started talking about this again, and I was trying to explain to you the process, and you were like, oh, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not doing that. And I think that it's a practiced skill over time because it's getting less and less uncomfortable. And I'm at the point now where now I've got very strict boundaries, as you know, about, like, especially, like, on a Sunday, I. I'm not doing anything. And if I have to do something, I need to know very much in advance so I can move that time to my, like, do nothing time to another day. It's like, I don't know if I. If you remember me explaining it to you, but I was practicing listening to what I wanted to do in the moment.
So if I wanted to read, I would do that. If I wanted to, like, go and paint something, I would do that. But I would have to actually want to do it if I wanted to, you know, just sit there and do nothing or, you know, go out for a coffee and a croissant. And I think it was a very intentional. And I don't know why I suddenly clicked that this needs to be. Has to have a lot of intent behind it, but that's what it was because I had to, like, retrain my brain, and now I feel much more reflective about why am I doing this.
[00:55:58] Speaker A: Yeah, no, that's interesting. And I think you're right. I was almost like, how do you do that? I don't get it. I don't get how you do it.
[00:56:04] Speaker B: I'm like, I don't know. I'm forcing myself.
[00:56:07] Speaker A: And I think there's still part of me which is like that, But I think there's also part of me which is slowly becoming better at listening to myself and allowing that rather than pushing back against it.
So even just, like, taking space to be on my own, if I feel like that's kind of what I need, rather than going and sitting with Matt and watching tv, for example, I might be like, actually, I just. I'm gonna go sit in my own space for a bit. So I think even making those decisions, rather than just going along that normal path, like, all the time, and I.
[00:56:44] Speaker B: Think you need to accept that it's gonna be messy. You know what I mean? Even if you had a day where it was like, my aim is to just do whatever, but maybe you spend, like, four hours, like, stressed and feeling guilty. That's just part of the process. It's not, because otherwise you're just trying to perfect something else. Do you know what I mean? So it's just getting like we always say, getting used to uncomfortability and putting yourself in those situation. And that's the only way that we grow and just become more human.
[00:57:14] Speaker A: Effy. Totally. And as you were saying, messy. I was thinking actual like physical messiness. Because if I look, if I look over here to the spare bed, it's covered with laundry that I have not put away for like probably, well, probably like the last week. But again, it's almost like it's.
I could have forced myself to put all of that stuff away or I could have listened to myself and be like, you know what? I just don't feel like I can do that right now.
But then there is, I suppose, some cost in that. Yeah, I feel really uncomfortable about the fact that it's an absolute state on the bed.
So I think it's like it is, it's this given, it's the give and the take, it's the what are we prioritizing? It's the what does like optimization look like, which is actually helping me rather than hindering me. I'm not saying don't try and like make your life better and kind of do what works for you, but actually optimization might look like something that you don't to want think it should look like, you know.
[00:58:17] Speaker B: Yes, definitely.
[00:58:20] Speaker A: And I think that this kind of brings us on to I guess, kind of our last bit, almost like our reflective bit. But I wanted us to like reflect together on this idea of unoptimized joy. And by this I am not saying that like this joy isn't optimized. Like the likelihood is. Right, likelihood is that our unoptimized joy is actually the most joyous and even the most optimized. Right.
So this is kind of just semantics I suppose at this point. But instead of joy that's optimized for capitalism and productivity, I wonder, like what about our joy that is really pure and that brings back the human part of it? So I wanted us both to share like a little example about doing something purely for the joy of it. So there's no tracking, there's none of the metrics involved. We're just happy. Just simple human moments.
[00:59:20] Speaker B: I think initially the first thing I say is reading. But I think that's boring at this point. Everyone knows that's all I do.
I just get stuck in a book. I love it. All of the human emotions.
I feel like I probably feel a lot more emotions what I'm reading than throughout the day. So it's like really nice. But also when you were speaking, the first thing that came into my mind is because I'm such an outdoors person, is the feeling of just like going fast, like the wind going through your hair. It's like riding a horse or skiing down the mountain as fast as you can. Just like this pure. Just like, oh my God, this is so much fun. I'm not trying to accomplish anything. I'm just. Just want to go. I just like. It's just like this feeling of freedom. I'm not trying to burn calories. I'm not trying to beat a certain time. I'm not trying to do anything other than just like, enjoy.
And for the longest time, like riding. Riding and skiing was the only time I wasn't thinking about something. And so I think that also helps with it because you have to focus on what you're doing technique wise, so that you don't fall. But it's just pure joy and adrenaline and fun.
[01:00:31] Speaker A: Totally. And that actually links into one of the things I was thinking about, which was roller coasters, right?
[01:00:37] Speaker B: Oh, nice.
[01:00:40] Speaker A: Because I actually, when I was thinking about this, I found it kind of difficult because I was like, oh, maybe it's like, I don't know, going on a walk. But then I was like, sometimes actually I feel like I have to go on a walk because I feel guilty for not taking Stanley out for a walk. And I was like, maybe that's not the.
In its purest sense. So I suppose I was trying to think, like, what would I do? Just like you say, just for the thrill of it. Like, I'm not getting anything. I'm not becoming a better human being necessarily from getting on a roller coaster and going around really fast.
But actually that feels like it is like just for the joy of it. I'm not doing it because I want to look cool or because I don't know, do you know what I mean? Like, it's because I just want to post it or I feel like it's something that I should be doing.
I'm just doing it for myself and for the fun of it. And I think on a more. On a more boring note, I think sometimes it feels like that when I'm like, just watching tv. Like if I find a really good TV series, it's like I have times when, if they replay Star wars like in the cinema, and then it comes on and you get like the scrolling kind of script coming up and I'm like, I'm gonna cry. It's like moments like that when it's almost I don't know, it just sparks a little nostalgic sort of reminder or a past experience in you, and it just feels almost like an overwhelming sense of joy and perhaps, I suppose, I guess, for everyone. What would your unoptimised joy be? What can you kind of create that? Even if it's like five minutes, what would it look like to maybe try not to optimize for once and just be. Be your human self?
[01:02:23] Speaker B: Yes. Awesome. I guess on that, we should close. Thank you guys so much for listening as always. We probably left you with more questions than answers, maybe even some more stress.
But sometimes that's the point. We love digging into the messy undercurrents of over optimization and why we treat ourselves like machines. Do you guys have any thoughts? Some questions, some rage? We do want to hear it? Please drop a comment, message us, or shout into the void if there's a topic that you'd love us to dig into next, please get in touch. We're always up for a new rabbit hole, as you know. And if you liked this episode, don't forget to like, follow rate. Tell your friends. You can find our links on the but why Instagram page and in the show notes. And remember, the first step to understanding is asking but why Sam.
