The optimization of health and fitness isn’t trying to sustain the peak of ability for as much as possible. Quite the opposite actually. We should be viewing the best of health and fitness capability to be the point which we can have the most ability that’s resistant to change.
Right now health is focused on “what’s the highest you’ve been?” when underneath it the more important question has always been “what’s the highest you can sustain?”
Andrew Huberman opened the world, or much of the U.S. at least, to the idea that you can leverage science and physiology to improve aspects of your health. I’m acutely reminded of this while reading a16z the state of longevity report. People became obsessed with trying to maximize their ability. Bryan Johnson wants to live forever and dunk (he won’t get either). Andrew Huberman wants to give you an optimization protocol for every aspect of your life. Andy Galpin wants to tell you the absolute best way to get a desired performance result.
This is the state of Optimization.
And it won’t last forever.
There is a cost to every optimization. An investment. An action. An effort. An energy.
Psychologically. Physically. Spiritually.
If you’re going to optimize multiple aspects of your health you have to try really hard to do that. You have to spend the money, the time, and the effort to track and implement changes appropriately. Or you have to consciously make the decision to do things differently. Usually the harder thing.
And what I’ve seen so much in my profession over the years are people who optimize with no respect to a timeframe. “I want to get stronger” or “I want to lose weight” is a result, but the lifestyle changes as the result of the process. Someone who focuses on the result makes sacrifices they cannot maintain. They take out debt on a cost they cannot pay back.
They achieve their result for only a short time. And then the habits fade. The actions crumble. And their progress recedes. Order is restored.
It’s not their fault. They were doing exactly what they set out to do. And they actually achieved their goal! It’s not their fault. It was the wrong goal.
Optimization needs to be timed. Like talking about vectors, they need a magnitude AND direction. Optimization without a specified direction doesn’t mean there isn’t one, it means life applies one for you. What you will be optimized for becomes a result of nature.
This works great for closed environments. Athletics is a great example. Take the Olympics, a 4-year event that calls for the most advanced programming principles against the world of competition to succeed. And you still have to perform. Or you have professional sports, where the annual cycle includes a season, off-season, micro cycles into between. The time frame is defined, the goals and expectations are defined, it really can be dialed down to a science and executed finitely. Results can be measured.
But for an open environment like life? nature? Evolution? You’re trying to optimize evolution? As if you know what is best not only for yourself, but for others. We are slowly coming to the conclusion that advances in AI will be able to out-think humans and it won’t take too much longer. And if the computers we invent can out-think us what in the world makes you think you can optimize a billion+ year old evolution art process??
We can’t. Nor should we.
What we can, should, and need to focus on instead is our resilience. Our staying power. Survival.
Our ability to maintain as high a level of performance as we can is much more suited to life than it is to athletics. But which is more important?
Would you rather have the more energy than everyone for a year or more energy than the average person for 50 years?
Would you rather spend the time and resources to have the perfect diet or have the range to eat anything for a day and not be affected?
Would you rather be able to climb a mountain for 10 years of your life or climb the stairs for the rest of it?
Would you rather need 10 things to be perfect to get a good night’s sleep or able to fall asleep on the couch during a party and still sleep pretty good?
Resilience loses the battle, but wins the war.
We will find far more benefits and enjoyment to our experience of life the more we are able to experience. When you live your life for optimization you create constraints, that this, this, and that condition need to be met in order for you to achieve the result. If those conditions are met naturally, great. Optimization is easy. But they’re usually not made easy. They require a cost. And each one of those costs either takes away or directly impacts your experience of life.
The sacrifices an olympic athlete makes in order to optimize their performance for a few weeks every 4 years are worth it when they win. When they’re standing on the podium achieving their life goals. The medal was the result, but the journey was the process. They eventually will take those learnings and experiences into their life to experience the rest of it.
Imagine if they were optimizing, making those sacrifices, for a result that never comes. It’s like preparing for a competition that has no date. You are constantly in preparation mode. Constantly in a feedback loop that needs conditions to be met.
I’ve worked with olympic athletes before. The work can be exhausting. 4 years is a long time. Many don’t make it. Most lose. But they dedicate themselves to the process and are better for it. Better for it WHEN IT ENDS.
When’s it over and they build their lives and identities around something else, they will always have those experiences to draw on.
Resilience gave them those experiences. Optimization was the process, but resilience allowed them to talk about it later.
For the crowd that’s optimizing for longevity, they’re putting energy towards a goal that can never come. “I want to spend my time and energy on living longer so that I can enjoy my time and energy.” It’s a paradox. If you are not experiencing the current life that optimization is bringing you, you’re missing the whole point!
But resilience… resilience allows you to not only experience MORE of that life, it allows you to experience it more often too.
You might not be the best at any one time, but you’ll be able to do more and last longer. Which by the way actually gives you a better chance of being the best as long as it’s not an attribute that naturally wanes with age.
Would you rather be the fastest person in a city when you were 25, or still running at 75?
If this were a competition, then of course I’d say the fastest at 25. Give me the medal and everything. But that’s athletics. Closed environment.
Life? Give me the ability, I’ll trade the level at which I do it.
Some people spend hours upon hours of their week food prepping, grocery shopping, cooking, and otherwise preparing to eat and then have enormous restrictions when they go out “because it’s not good for you”, and some people smash taco bell at 2am on a road trip with no punishment.
The resilience allows you to partake in life, say yes, take risks, have fun. It puts you out in the world without fear of survival. Is freedom the right to do something or actually doing it?
That’s why longevity right now is a just an idea. They’re shooting the arrow in the wrong direction. All these resources, information, and energy are going to the wrong goal. You’re trying to optimize your life for better longevity but you should be trying to become more resilient in your life for better longevity.
You optimize for sports, goals, projects, missions.
You build resilience for everything else.
I know in my life resilience has allowed me to take risks and enjoy experiences I’ll never forget.
Resilience gave me the ability take the 4 day Inca Trail to Machu Pichu while sleeping on the floor, eating whatever was being served no questions, and hiking 10+ mile a days and still enjoy every second. Absolutely nothing was optimized, and not only did I survive but I enjoyed every minute of it.
Resilience is what allowed me to eat fried food for 4 days straight on a Caribbean island, sleep outside in a mosquito net at 80+ degree weather, and the most exercise being from walking from the car to the end of the beach to set up for the day. This one was easy to survive, and I sure as hell enjoyed it too.
Being optimized used to be the goal. I used to have severe GI distress. No doctor or formal diagnosis could be found. The head of GI at cleveland clinic told me, “I believe your pain is real, but we just can’t find anything wrong through our testing.”
Optimization certainly helped me when I started seeing a naturopathic doctor who taught me the right, natural, optimizations to make to heal my gut over the next 9 months.
But resilience is what keeps me there. Resilience is what I choose to live by because I know the effort and costs of optimization. I’ve spent my life in constant optimization. And I hated it. It’s truly awful.
Optimization for someone who’s healthy is great. There’s no negative feedback. You can say or feel you have healthy eating habits but if you had severe, curled-on the-floor stomach pain every time you ate the wrong food or drink, you’d be reminded quickly how far away from truly optimized you really are.
Or if you literally had to bring your own food to nights out, days away, a friends cookout; because you needed to ensure you’d eat what was part of the diet necessary to heal. Optimization isn’t so glamorous then.
Resilience is what allows me to eat a fried chicken sandwich with hot sauce and 2 beers on a casual saturday afternoon. It doesn’t send me to the ER. It doesn’t make me sick. I still fall asleep at night and wake up rested the next day. Do I feel as good as I would if I meticulously planned and accounted for every calorie that day? No. Probably not. But did I enjoy that day as a part of my life a lot more? Absolutely.
Optimization is good. Great even. The best! At the right time, and for the right purpose.
We should continue to optimize to achieve our goals. We should work hard, put in the effort, and make good decisions so that we can be successful in our pursuits.
But the idea of optimizing your life is misplaced. We should be enjoying our life, as resilient as possible. Experiencing all of it as often as we can. Hot sun. Cold water. Long days. Short nights. Grief. Joy. They all contribute positively.
When you optimize, you try to remove the things you think are negative. Sometimes you’re right, sometimes you’re wrong. Either way you experienced just a little bit less.
The direction of society is clear. Optimization is the future and is only just getting started. We will only continue to improve on our understanding of physiology and science, and the technology we use to do it will improve as well. We will optimize everything as much as we can.
And one day we will wonder what has improved. We’ve gotten all the results we want, yet illness is as prevalent as ever. The numbers we worked so hard to perfect are there, yet something new goes wrong. The evolution of death is just 1 step ahead that of life.
And there, sitting in the distance, slowly avoiding the ultimate call, are the resilient ones. The ones who have lasted the longest, seen the most, and done it all. They may have lost many of the games in life, but they never lost the game of life. They didn’t win, but they were the last to lose.
In the age of optimization while so many are focused on perfect, those that have the courage to be resilient might find themselves in the best position of all.
- Trainer 01