Recently, Diary of a CEO host Steven Bartlett (a man known for his “obsession” with data and wellness tracking) drew some backlash after sharing what became a hot take. He claimed that a couple of glasses of wine “ruined” his life for the next three days, primarily because of the way they affected his sleep, gym time, and podcasting, i.e., his work. 

But among the online criticism, one comment from a self-described “reformed optimizer” really stands out. 

When self-improvement starts feeling like self-surveillance

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A content creator named Ashwinn Krishnaswamy (@schwinnabegobrand) confessed that, like Bartlett and many productivity aficionados, he spent years tracking his sleep, eating/drinking, and exercise, which he then tallied at the end of the year. And yet, keeping that data didn’t necessarily add to his well-being. 

It led him to realize one important thing: “optimization culture has gone too far, and it is spiritually killing us.” That the “tyranny of measurement” tries to make us into better machines, not better humans.

“We need a 90 sleep score, walk 10,000 steps a day, a bed cooled to 68 degrees, six miles of Strava, all for us to be better at sending emails,”........

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