Before we get into it, I wanted to let you know that How To Be Less is going on summer holiday and I’ll be taking August off writing the newsletter. As much as I love writing it, writing weekly essays alongside being a full-time writer is a lot and I’m feeling a little creatively burnt out. I’ll be back in September with bundles of back-to-school energy and my usual hot takes on optimisation and wellness culture.

If you’re a paid subscriber and you’d like to pause your membership for the month of August, I totally understand. You can pause your membership for a month in Substack settings. If you’re not a paid subscriber and enjoy How To Be Less, I’d really appreciate you supporting the newsletter for just £4 a month, which will allow me to keep writing it and give me more time for better reporting.

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Given that I’m going to be skipping a few essays next month, I thought I’d share some of the articles I’m most proud of writing on How To Be Less, in case you need to burst the optimisation bubble while I’m gone:

Okay, now onto today’s newsletter! Below the paywall, I’m sharing my take on what we’re getting wrong about seasonal living, a journal prompt for anyone else feeling stressed about the end of summer looming, a novel that perfectly satirises wellness culture, my new favourite podcast of all time and an interview with journalist, creator and runner Ali Ball, who shares content about what it means to be a lesbian woman in the world of running.

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Prefer to listen to this newsletter? For £4 a month, paid subscribers get access to audio versions of every essay I publish.

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I used to worry a lot about being physically tired. The idea of getting one less hour of sleep than usual would fill me with panic and I’d find myself centering my evenings and weekends around optimising my sleep. I wanted to ensure I was setting myself up for a good day at work, and looking after my health.

Obviously, sleeping is really good for you. It’s one of the best things you can do for your body. And research shows that most people need between seven to nine hours of sleep each night to feel healthy and happy. But I was becoming obsessive about my sleep and I started to experience a lot of guilt if I’d stayed up late because I was out with friends or watched another episode of a series I was enjoying. It felt like I was letting myself down.

As the $600 billion sleep optimisation industry booms, there’s an increasing feeling that sleep – much like many other aspects of our health – needs to be done perfectly in order for it to be effective.

You know what I’m talking about – the Whoop recovery scores, which rate your sleep each morning, giving you a red, orange or green ring, which dictates how ready you are to take on the day. £5000 temperature control mattresses, which also track your sleep (because… of course they do). Even if you’re not buying into the sleep economy, you’re probably feeling worried and maybe even guilty about your sleep, or lack thereof. In fact, a Ciphr study found that 41% of UK adults think feeling tired and not getting enough sleep is the most common cause of stress in their lives.

Having left one too many nights out early, I came to realise that while getting enough sleep was important, there are so many other joyful, meaningful parts of my life – like being with my friends and family and doing the things I enjoy – that were worth prioritising just as much, if not more.

On top of that, tracking your sleep and taking steps to improve it can be detrimental to your sleep quality.

Heather Darwall-Smith is a sleep psychotherapist and one of the most esteemed experts on the topic in the UK. She’s the author of How To Be Awake (So You Can Sleep Through The Night) and The Science of Sleep: Stop Chasing a Good Night’s Sleep and Let It Find You. I interviewed her last year for a story I wrote for the iPaper on consistently getting seven hours of sleep a night rather than eight. Spoiler alert: I actually started sleeping better.

Darwall-Smith put this down to the fact that I was feeling less stressed about my sleep because I stopped trying to hit a target that wasn’t working for me. “The harder we try, the worse sleep gets because trying induces stress and if the body is stressed, it feels as though it needs to be alert, which ends up fragmenting our sleep,” she explains.

It’s why orthosomnia exists, which is a condition in which people become obsessed with chasing perfect sleep, often because of the data their fitness trackers provide them with and, as such, start sleeping worse.

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It’s hard to believe that this wasn’t involved in the business strategy of these tracking devices, as well as other parts of the sleep industry. It’s a Catch-22, one in which the people selling us sleep gadgets and tools need us to feel tired and worry about our sleep in order for their business to thrive.

According to Darwall-Smith, the body has a built-in sleep system more sophisticated than any tech. “Sleep is controlled by a process called homeostasis, which means your body tracks how long you have been awake and builds up a need for sleep, often called ‘sleep pressure’,” she tells me. “If you have a short night, your brain makes up for it by sleeping more deeply, not always for longer. You get more slow-wave sleep, which is the deepest and most restorative stage, when your body does most of its repair work.”

“This recovery happens on its own, without special planning, supplements, or hacks. The only thing that really gets in the way is stress,” Darwall-Smith concludes.

And look, I’m not encouraging you to switch to a Thatcherite-four-hours-a-night mode of shut-eye, the likes of which are still emulated in popular culture today. There’s two ends of the spectrum nowadays, neither of which are particularly helpful – on one end we have influencers telling us to embrace the soft life and prioritise rest above everything else. On the other end, we have podcast bros who want to train their bodies “to jolt awake at 4am” (being a manosphere-coded podcaster sounds, above all, so unpleasant).

These two perspectives are often overwhelmingly gendered and the sleep industry is now aggressively marketing towards women. Oura, who make the bulky health tracking rings you’ll see all the Pilates girls wearing, are ‘capitalizing on the Gen-Z woman’s wellness obsession’, according to Vogue Business. And there are plenty of sleep products targeted towards pre and post-natal women, as well as menopausal women, ostensibly designed with the best intentions, but often leaving women feeling more guilty about how their body’s natural processes and lifestyle is impacting their sleep and health.

The irony of becoming obsessed with tracking your sleep data is that it might not even be accurate. “Several studies show that while wearables can track how long you sleep fairly well, they often get sleep stages or disturbances wrong. This means people might be changing their whole day based on a number that could be inaccurate,” Darwall-Smith explains

Her advice as someone who has been researching sleep for years is surprisingly simple: “Shift your attention from your sleep score to things you enjoy, and let your body handle the rest. Believe it or not, it does know how to.”

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I had been looking forward to the first weekend of July for a long time. That’s because I was planning a digital detox at Unplugged*, which involved locking my phone in a box for three days and staying in a cabin in the middle of nowhere. I was convinced it would be the cure to what feels like eternal burnout and the perfect antidote to a stressful few months at work.

But when we arrived at the cabin and it was time to lock my phone away, something felt off. It wasn’t that I could no longer scroll on TikTok, or read the news or the fact I wouldn’t be able to access to Google Maps (although I must assure you that living without a handheld satnav was far more challenging than I expected). The feelings of unease, of guilt, started to arise when I had to text my close friends and family to tell them I wouldn’t be contactable for the next 72 hours, sharing the number of the Nokia mobile phone the cabin supplied for emergencies.

It was a familiar feeling, one I usually experience when I’m apologising to someone for not getting back to their text quickly enough. This happens almost every time I text one of my friends, as despite my very high screen time, I tend to let my WhatsApp messages pile up for days and weeks, feeling too overwhelmed and distracted to reply to them in the moment. I experience a rush of panic at least a couple of times a week — the kind of panic you had as a child when you realised you forgot to do your homework just as you locked eyes with the teacher who set it — when I realise I’ve left a family member or friend who means the world to me on read for the best part of a month.

At the same time, I’m actively trying to spend less time on my phone and I know that reducing my screen time is the single most helpful thing I can do for my mental health, creativity and general sense of happiness.

So what kind of digital communication do we owe the people in our lives and how do we navigate setting WhatsApp boundaries?

Perhaps it’s easier if you’re regularly seeing your friends in person. But almost all of my close friends live at least two hours away from me, which means that texting is all we have for the periods in between our weekends together. I worry that becoming less digitally available to my friends will negatively impact our relationship, or make them think that I’m devaluing their friendship, which couldn’t be further from the truth.

The thing is, for the most part, I don’t think that texting my friends or liking their Instagram posts actually does anything to improve our relationship. In fact, when I was in New Zealand at the start of the year, I took three weeks off social media. I experienced a whole range of benefits — better sleep, less stress, I read a ton — but one of the most unexpected things that happened was that I really missed my friends.

I’m embarrassed to admit that I’m regularly overwhelmed by the prospect of social plans. I often find myself dreading them, even, wishing I could crawl up into bed with a book and sleep for 12 hours instead.

But when I wasn’t keeping up with friends on social media, I suddenly craved their company more than I ever had before. Crucially, I wasn’t missing texting them, or scrolling through their Instagram stories. I missed dancing with them, laughing together, conspiring at the back of dimly lit pubs about how we might spend the rest of the night, or the rest of our lives.

In a lot of cases, I think the extent to which we’re in constant communication with the people in our lives through our phones fosters a false sense of closeness. Sending a thoughtful message or sharing a four minute voice note with nuggets of advice can be meaningful sometimes. But I don’t think we should be relying on WhatsApp or Instagram to hold the threads of our relationships together.

Not only is it less special than experiencing the real world together, but it lets us off the hook too often for not turning up in person. A paragraph-long message feels like it makes up for forgetting to send a birthday card or not turning up to celebrate each other’s milestones. Ironically, the fact that I’m so burnt out by my screen time and the expectations of being online has been my excuse one too many times for missing a family party or skipping dinner with my girlfriends.

If you’re my friend or family member reading this, please know that I’ll never take you not replying to my message quickly personally. And I never need you to apologise for a ‘long reply’ (something I do very regularly). There are very few cases in which spending less time on your phone isn’t good for you, and I actively encourage that, even if it means I don’t hear from you for a few weeks, or longer.

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And while you’re here, let me ask another thing of you — and I might be the only member of my generation to ever ask you, or anyone, this — if you want to talk to me, please could you just call me? You don’t need to text me to ask if you can call me — just call me! I can’t help but feel that we’ve really overcomplicated the way we communicate digitally. Unless your text requires a one word answer, surely a phone call is the most practical and meaningful way to speak to each other, when a coffee or a big glass of wine together isn’t an option.

Ok, enough of my old man ranting and raving. And yes that is 1000 words reasoning as to why I’m such a bad replier. But you know what, I’m not sorry for my late reply! Spending three days without my phone was genuinely blissful. I read and wrote more than I had in ages and I spent real quality time with my partner. In fact, I didn’t realise how much phones were getting in the way of our time together until we went without them.

I’ll be sharing more about my digital detox experience in my monthly series, Unoptimise, available exclusively for paid subscribers on the final Friday of the month. Upgrade your subscription for just £4 a month, which gives you access to Unoptimise, as well as audio versions of my essays, including this one.

But for now, let me just say, if you’re thinking about a digital detox, especially one with Unplugged, I cannot recommend it enough. I’d like to return every weekend, but I guess every year will have to do.

*my stay at Unplugged was kindly gifted, but I am not required to share anything about my stay — I just genuinely loved it!

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I have to make a confession: I regularly scroll on LinkedIn. It’s one of my primary forms of procrastination during the working day. Its vague relation to my work and the fact I don’t really enjoy any of the content I consume means that I feel less guilty about it than scrolling on any other social media apps. During my 3pm I’ll-do-anything-but-write scrolling sessions, I mostly find motivational posts, obviously AI-written, about people’s career journeys and lightbulb moments. But recently, I came across something written by a human (yay!) about her unwillingness to remove her Oura ring, despite the negative impact it was having on her health (boo!)

She explained that the health data her wearable was sharing with her was having a negative impact on her physical and mental health. The constant tracking was making her stressed, consistently bad sleep scores made her worry and, as a result, sleep worse, and she was starting to fret unnecessarily about her health. So she posed the question to her 500+ connections: should I remove the fitness tracker?

Yes, I thought. Take it off! Free yourself from the chains of endless personal data!

But it wasn’t that simple, she caveated. LinkedIn Lady works in wellness. As such, wearing a fitness tracker was near-enough essential to her work, a way to show her colleagues and wider network that she gets it, that she’s into wellness with a capital W. Apparently, this chunky, clever ring helped her find and maintain community, even furthered her career, which meant that taking it off didn’t feel like an option.

This seems over the top, right? And perhaps this corporate approach to wellness isn’t something most people who work outside of the industry would ever have to consider. But LinkedIn Lady’s conundrum represents the ubiquity of a concept many of us subscribe to without even realising: wellness signalling.

Wellness signalling is a growing trend that’s shaping the way people interact with health and fitness products and experiences. It refers to people making their health and fitness habits intentionally visible, physically and digitally, and making wellness a part of their identity.

Wearables are the obvious example. It’s also why health patches are on the rise – in an article for The Guardian, Morwenna Ferrier described them as “performative health” (”when I failed to give up smoking, my nicotine patch was proof to the outside world that I was at least trying,” she wrote). It’s why niche activewear brands designed for specific activities are having so much success – wearing them tells people that you run, or climb, or lift – and it definitely has something to do with the rise of matcha (any kind of green, drinkable liquid gaining popularity tends to come back to our obsession with personal health).

Wellness isn’t something we do in private nowadays, or a small part of our day-to-day lives, like a pre-work gym class might have been 10 years ago. It’s become a way to climb social ladders for everyone from young men who dream of being CEOs and want to prove their dedication to themselves, to people investing in Third Space memberships with the primary aim of networking, and women taking up reformer Pilates because it fits their aesthetic.

In a Vogue Business article on why Oura is targeting young women with its latest iteration of their ring, writer Amy O’Brien explains that the visibility of wellness products is key to their success in luxury markets:

[P]reventative health has become something of a status symbol among consumers more broadly. Luxury, once defined by a large focus on possessions, has shifted to self-optimization. Wearing an Oura ring is one of the clearest ways to signal that you’re prioritising the new luxury apex — a higher, more sustained state of “wellness”.

Wellness first started to become cool shortly after the pandemic when, suddenly, looking after your health felt much more important, and it was also a way to prove that you’re worthy of leaving the house. At the time, this was mostly praised as positive. In a Glamour article from 2021, writer Lottie Winter was at that point describing this idea as “health-signalling”, before the word wellness became a catch-all. Winter spoke to the founder of Cult Beauty, Alexia Inge, who thought this trend might be a good thing (which obviously has nothing to do with the fact that it might boost her multi-million pound company):

“The pandemic has prompted a deeper awareness of the need to care for both mental and physical health and we’re starting to see a re-prioritising of wellness,” says Alexia. According to Alexia, wellness is expanding to encompass all aspects of our lives, from our beauty products to our diets. “If there’s one positive to emerge from the pandemic it will be the elevation of wellness to something more than just a hobby for the affluent.”

At this point, there was a widespread agreement that thinking more carefully about looking after our health was a good thing. No one could have predicted how quickly and successfully wellness would proliferate throughout every aspect of our lives just five years later. A 2025 McKinsey study found that 84% of Americans and 79% of Brits say that wellness is a “top” or “important” priority. Another survey, published in 2023 by Statista, found that 50% of gym-goers view fitness as a core part of their identity.

As we’re socialising at the sauna and watching TV in red light therapy masks, the mainstreaming of wellness, the fact that it’s cool, means it’s now very difficult to know which of our wellness habits are genuinely having a positive impact on our wellbeing, and how high “feeling good” comes on the priority list when it’s all tied up in a performative notion of wellness.

Wellness also feels more prescriptive than ever. There’s a list of things we can do that will improve our health: ice baths, green juice, collagen, magnesium. Ticking these things off our list not only shows to others that we’re committed to good health, but it’s a way of proving it to ourselves. Optimisation culture assumes that feeling good is simple – you’re either optimising or you’re not. As such, it assigns a lot of blame to the individual when things go wrong – it’s because you didn’t get eight hours of sleep, you shouldn’t have skipped that workout, that’s what happens when you drink three glasses of wine.

This means that it can be very difficult to connect what is actually making us feel healthier and happier. It feels like we’re being told, don’t listen to your body! Listen to the law of the wellness industry!

It’s convenient, then, that so much of feeling well within the context of wellness is about buying products or expensive experiences. In the aforementioned Vogue Business article, Tom Hale, the CEO of Oura told the interviewer that targeting young women was providing unprecedented growth for the company. He said this about the growth of the wellness industry in the US:

“Show me the business around here that’s growing 100% year-on-year, isn’t losing money, and is a billion dollars in revenue,” Hale says, looking around the conference hall. “I guarantee you we are literally it.”

As the people spearheading these companies are so candid about their financial motives, it’s difficult not to feel like the pervasiveness of wellness signalling was manufactured and that we’re being duped by their products. Just picture it: 10 white men in suits doing dramatic, Disney-evil-laughs as they watch people’s 5-9 morning routines on TikTok, sincerely claiming that they can’t start their day without electrolytes or standing on a vibration plate.

Not to mention that deriving status from conforming to societal standards around looking after our health is an essentially elitist, ableist and classist idea that prioritises people who fit societal beauty standards, have the means to invest in expensive healthtech and the basic levels of good health that means they can do all of the wellness extras. When we prescribe societal status or even worth to people who take part in wellness, what does this mean for people who are struggling with their physical and mental health? Ironically, the very people who might have benefited most from the proliferation of wellness in its original form (the idea that it’s valuable to take care of your wellbeing) have now been excluded from the movement.

Wellness signalling is a far more complicated type of status than owning a luxury bag, because aiming to maintain or improve good health can be an objectively helpful thing to do. Dismissing wellness as a concept isn’t always the right choice – most of us find that some parts of it, at least, do have a positive effect on our physical or mental health.

The problem is, it’s no longer something we can simply tap in and out of. It’s an identity, which has totally warped how we think about what’s good for us. Try to ask yourself: what would you do to feel well if no one was watching? I doubt any one of us can answer that question straightforwardly, because there’s a type of self-surveillance built into the new wellness paradigm that means someone is always watching.

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this piece, make sure to subscribe to How To Be Less to receive the newsletter in your inbox every Friday morning. And please do share your thoughts on wellness signalling and performative optimisation in the comments.

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It features some of the ways I’ve been reflecting on my own relationship with optimisation and self-love, journal prompts to help you do the same, articles, podcasts and/or books that will make you think and a short interview with someone who I believe has nurtured their relationship to wellness, or living well more generally.

The first issue is free, but in future, Unoptimise will be exclusively available to paid subscribers. If you enjoy it and would like to receive it in your inbox on a monthly basis, you can subscribe to How To Be Less for £4 per month. Becoming a paid subscriber also means that I’m able to continue dedicating time to How To Be Less in its entirety and as being a journalist in 2026 is about as dire as it’s ever been financially, I thought it’s worth mentioning that I’d really appreciate you becoming a paid subscriber to the newsletter, if you’re able.

If you’re not able to become a paying subscriber at this point, it means a lot that you read How To Be Less anyway. And it would mean even more if you shared it with a friend who you think might enjoy it, or the modern version of that, shared it on social media. You can also refer a friend for one month’s free access to the paid benefits of How To Be Less.

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Well, that’s quite enough shameless self-promotion! I’m really excited to share the first edition of Unoptimise. It features reflections on the whole Steven Bartlett wine thing (more on that here), a fascinating piece on why the language around hormonal health is being used against women, and an interview with creator and writer Jodie Rogers, who helped pioneer the seasonal living movement on social media (her monthly ritual posts are one of the things that have allowed me to really appreciate the seasons for what they are, even the dark and cold ones, which is a feat!)

Three things to think about

some musings I’ve had on optimisation culture this month

• Trashing optimisation culture is the next big thing now. Thanks to Steven Bartlett’s melodramatic episode on drinking three glasses of wine, everyone is talking about just how toxic optimisation culture is. I am, of course, very happy to see more discussions around why living like robots is so bad for us. But I think some of the TikToks, articles and general discussions off the back of this incident lack nuance, and have a slightly condescending tone, which is ironic, because I think you’d struggle to find anyone in their 20s and 30s right now who hasn’t bought into self-optimisation culture even a little bit. It’s not as simple as saying: abandon your health tracker and just have fun. Self-optimisation has infiltrated our lives in so many complicated ways. All that being said, as long as this is where the dialogue starts, and not where it ends, I think this could be the start of a big cultural shift.

• Self-importance might be tricking you into being stressed. And yes, I am talking to myself. I had to take two days off sick this month, because I caught a summer cold the day the first heatwave ended (further proof I’m not designed for UK life). I’m self-employed, which means sick days are inherently stressful as I don’t get paid and they mess up my schedule. On my second day off, I found myself complaining to my boyfriend that I was frustrated because I was too sick to work, but well enough to journal, or read or watch rom-coms, which felt frustrating and had me questioning my eligibility to have a day of work. And then I heard myself speaking and thought, that’s literally the perfect sick day! I realised, I felt like I had to be stressed about staying off work to prove I was busy and had things to do. But actually, I can still be successful and ambitious, while also making the most of a day off work on the couch. I know that, usually, stress is complicated and telling yourself to just stop being stressed doesn’t work. But in this case, it kind of did.

• Our intuition will save us. When was the last time you didn’t know how to do something and simply thought about it, trusted your gut and did it? With the availability of search engines and, now, AI Chatbots, I’d predict that the answer to that question for most of us is: I don’t remember. Although it is helpful in many ways to have all of the information in the world available to us at any time, double or triple checking everything is exhausting. For most things, it would probably be better just to do the thing slightly wrong, and have saved yourself the screen time and brain space. Even more importantly, second guessing yourself and failing to trust your intuition breeds a type of self-disrespect. Making human decisions is more important than ever now, and trusting my intuition (AKA minimising my daily Google searches) is my main impetus towards self-love for the next month.

Three things to journal about

prompts to help you think about your relationship to optimisation

• How would you spend this coming weekend if the only objective was to experience as much joy as possible?

• What hobbies, habits or experiences do you have or would like to have that don’t improve your physical health or career?

• Which parts of your life genuinely light you up and give you meaning?

Three things to consume

articles, books and podcasts that will help you think more critically about optimisation and wellness culture

• I really enjoyed this piece by Hannah’s Arrasmith for her newsletter Hannah’s Atelier about why moving to France and stepping away wellness culture made her feel healthier than ever. Here’s an excerpt:

This wellness culture of hyper-vigilance meant that throughout the day, questions constantly ran through my head: How was my sleep? Is this food inflammatory? Is my cortisol high? Each question may be reasonable individually, but together they created a state of continual surveillance.

Here, things have been different. Every morning, a group of French ladies gather at the cafe outside of my apartment. They are not stressing over if their pastry and coffee will spike their blood sugar or if they are hitting their morning protein goal, but just being present with their friends, sitting in the sun, and laughing. I have begun to adopt this same freedom to enjoy again.

• The brilliant Serafina Kenny wrote a fantastic piece for Dazed about why the push for women to care more about their hormonal health is a pretty backwards idea. It feels like right-wing, traditionalist views are seeping into every conversation centred around how women should live their lives nowadays, and Kenny makes an interesting argument as to why this is what’s happening here:

This is the thing: the narrative about hormones on the internet at the moment is simply old-fashioned. Chalking up women’s feelings and behaviours to their hormones rather than as legitimate responses to their circumstances, or suggesting that they need to change the way they are living in order to tend to their changeable and primitive hormones, plays into historical misogynistic ideas.

The piece also covers why living your life based on your menstrual cycle is unhelpful and reflects our obsession with optimisation — during the luteal phase, we must rest like we’ve never rested before and, when ovulating, become our horniest, most productive selves. It’s well worth a read.

• Ann Patchett is one of my favourite novelists. She’s also ridiculously wise, as I’ve discovered this month while binge listening to every podcast episode she’s ever been on. Her approach to life is so joyful and creative, and her dedication to her writing is completely inspiring. Not long ago, she decided to re-read and analyse her most successful novel, Bel Canto and published the annotations. During an episode of NPR’s Wild Card, Patchett spoke about how sitting down with a work written by her younger self allowed for a pretty unique self-reflective experience:

I’m so glad I wrote that, and I would never say that about something that I had just written. Yeah, I would never praise myself in present time, nor would I ever be critical like this to anyone else’s work, I would never say to a student, to a friend in a review, you are a fool, look at this horrible thing you’ve done. And yet, of myself 24 years ago, I’m happy to do that.

I often cringe when looking back at blog posts or essays I wrote 10 years ago. Granted, they didn’t win the Women’s Prize For Fiction. But it was a reminder to not only look back with kindness on my younger self (her writing, and everything else) but with respect too.

Three things to learn

some takeaways from a person I admire because of their attitude towards optimisation, wellness and life

Jodie Rogers has been a content creator for 10 years. But she recently decided to step away from TikTok and Instagram, where she has a combined following of over 200,000 followers. You can read more about that decision in a newsletter she recently published, but it basically came down to the fact that social media was making her feel bad (as it is for many of us). As someone who claims that social media is necessary for my job, even though it makes me feel stressed and tired and overstimulated on an almost daily basis, I found Jodie’s decision genuinely brave. Before this, Jodie was my first introduction to the idea of seasonal living, thanks to her posts on how to exist with the seasons month-to-month, an idea which has made my day-to-day much nicer.

With all of this in mind, I knew she was the first person I wanted to speak to for Unoptimise. Read our short but sweet interview below.

What’s the biggest step you’ve taken recently to create a life that feels meaningful for you?

I recently let go of a client I’ve had since I went self employed in 2022. They’re a regular, consistent client, but I really wasn’t enjoying the work anymore and hadn’t been for a while. It feels scary, but I’m really excited to see what the extra time in my schedule will lead to. It’s a step that’s part of a bigger picture towards thinking more about what success means to me and creating a life around that, not around what I “should” be doing.

What’s an act of self-care that has helped you develop a more loving relationship with yourself?

It’s hard to narrow it down — exercising purely for the sake of my mental health and because I want to stay healthy has been a huge shift for me. But the first thing that came to mind was journaling. Time and time again it helps me see when I’m being unkind to myself or when I need to challenge my thoughts around something. Even the act of giving myself space to sit down and write instead of distracting myself from what can feel uncomfortable feels like the kinder thing to do.

Is there something you’ve read, listened to or watched that has had a lasting effect on how you think about optimisation and wellness?

It’s got to be Wintering by Katherine May. I first read it in October 2021, and it was one of the first “self help” books I’ve read where there was more of a suggestion to look inwards for wellbeing support instead of constantly looking outward for advice. It’s helped me connect with the natural world in a completely different way, and see the darker side months in a more positive light.

Thanks so much for reading the first issue of Unoptimise! I’ll be back with a free essay next Friday and the next issue of Unoptimise will be out at the end of July.

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As I’m sure you’re all aware, earlier this week, the UK government set out its plans to ban social media for people under the age of 16. Frankly, I welcome the move. I know that it’s not as simple as taking young people’s phones away from them. But as a 27-year-old who writes about how bad social media is for our health on a more or less daily basis, I still can’t help but wile aways hours of my life on TikTok. I can’t imagine what my teenage self would have inadvertently given up if she had access to an endless feed of short form video and inevitably refused to listen to her parents about why that’s not good for her. So this is a start.

Plenty of other people feel the same way. In fact, I’ve seen many posts on social media (let’s not bother even commenting on the irony) from people who are asking the government if they could also ban adults from social media. From tongue in cheek jokes about excessive screen time, to genuine calls to implement curfews on social media use across the nation, there’s a general consensus that we need interventions to help lower our screen time.

A modern life survival kit

It's why devices like the Brick — a physical device that costs £54 and blocks you from social media apps — and screen time limit apps are so popular. There are even cabins designed for digital detoxes that require you to lock your phone away for four nights.

It feels like the only way we can move forward societally and function personally while social media apps still exist is by becoming extremely disciplined with the way we use them. It’s an idea I subscribe to. I have a Brick (I’m yet to set it up because I am naturally a technophobe and can not be bothered with the faf) and I’m going to one of the aforementioned digital detox cabins in two weeks time (more on that soon).

Discipline is becoming a fundamental part of our lives in many other ways too. I’ll spare you too many thoughts on fitness trackers, given I already wrote 1000 words on them last week, but their entire premise is to encourage you to develop strict habits. You have to do a certain amount of movement to close your rings, or go to bed earlier so your recovery score is high enough to warrant a green light. More and more people are signing up to fitness challenges like marathons and documenting their commitment to their training plans. Not to mention ice baths, Gen-Z’s favourite hobby, which involve subjecting yourself to extreme physical discomfort for a set amount of time, just to show that you can.

Strict skincare routines, morning routines, evening routines, Sunday reset routines are the norm — proof that you’re a functioning, happy adult. Reading a book these days is even proof of your willpower nowadays, something people aspire to, given how much easier it is to scroll on Instagram. And the idea of being intellectual is increasingly becoming about your dedication to completing an authors’s entire oeuvre rather than your general ability to think critically and interestingly, thanks to the TikTokification of being smart and cultured.

The fact that we’re all going to such great efforts to maintain these habits that we believe will make us feel happy and healthy is proof that the way society is currently set up isn’t conducive to our mental and physical wellbeing. The existence of phones and the horrible, awful, addictive apps on them, the fact that a lot of us spend most of our daily waking hours sitting down (something humans were never supposed to do), the way in which a community is something you can sign up to join when ordering a t-shirt from a fast fashion company, rather than a space, or a culture, to exist in.

So is discipline simply a necessary part of living in the modern world, given that it’s essentially set up for us to fail? Our relentless pursuit towards self-discipline probably at least partly comes down to increasing social isolation. Many people don’t have communities to rely on to hold them accountable to their goals and sense of selves. Apps, devices and, perhaps, state control, fill that gap.

A short history of discipline

It might be reassuring to know that we’re not the first, or even the second generation to feel like this. We’re actually about a hundred generations away from the first philosophers who theorised that discipline was the purpose of life. “We are what we repeatedly do” is a quote attributed to Aristotle, who was barely laying foundations for what came later: stoicism, a school of thought that says self-control and resilience are key to a fulfilling life.

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But I think discipline plays a different role in our lives now. Because although it does feel necessary to stay healthy and happy amidst a social health crisis, it’s also glamourised online. With this in mind, it’s not ancient philosophical theories that I think are the most resonant now. The idea that feels scarily relevant when I think about the role discipline plays in our life now is Michel Foucault’s Panopticism. The idea is based on an 18th century prison known as the Panopticon, a circular building with a central observation tower, which meant, at any moment of the day, inmates could be under surveillance. He theorised that this creates a type of social control where individuals regulate their own behaviour because they believe they are under constant surveillance.

I’m sure I’m not the first person to compare Foucault’s theory to the way in which social media operates in our lives, but I wonder if our collective dedication to discipline has something to do with how we’d like to appear on social media. Even people who don’t post often tend to share big achievements or milestones, and our desire to show up as our best selves on social media surely plays some part, even if its subconscious, in governing our habits and decisions. Even if you’re simply a viewer, some of the most popular influencers have found success in religiously sticking to and sharing their daily routines (there are 6.8 million posts on TikTok with the tag #morningroutine).

It’s unfathomable in more ways than one to imagine how different our lives would be now without social media, but I wonder if part of that would be the role discipline plays in our lives. Because surely part of the pleasure of self-control is being able to exhibit your will power.

Do we really need discipline?

Despite my usual spiralling, I don’t think that it’s inherently harmful or sad for discipline to play a role in our lives. I’ve shared this passage before, so forgive me if you’re a regular reader of How To Be Less (also, thank you! I appreciate you reading!) But there’s a chapter of Shon Faye’s memoir Love In Exile that really stayed with me. In it, she explores how discipline became essential to developing a loving relationship with herself:

I have loved writing for as long as I can remember, and for almost a decade now it has been a part of how I make a living. Yet, until the publication of my first book, I used to deprecate its importance, to be falsely modest and dismissive of its significance to me. Taking my writing more seriously, carving out specific times of day to work, treating my practice as an ever evolving and dynamic entity; speaking about it with a seriousness that reflects its central purpose in my life. Discipline over myself, my work and my habits has over time helped me to build greater confidence and self-worth, greater respect for who I am.

Since reading Faye’s book, I’ve made an effort to be stricter with myself about the time I spend reading and writing, including writing this newsletter, because they are things that I love and make me feel like me. I’ve also become more disciplined with the things that I know will make me feel good, even if they don’t fill me with meaning or joy in the moment: walking and lifting weights, for example.

Of course, this can become a slippery slope. Because getting eight hours of sleep makes me feel good, but leaving the pub early to do so doesn’t. Drawing the line can be tough and I think that’s why so many people have taken to applying a disciplined approach to every area of their lives. It’s more complicated to really sit back and think about how it serves you, disregarding how it might shape your personal brand, help you close virtual rings or get you a theoretical gold star for effort.

As it becomes increasingly normal to optimise every area of your life, discipline is no longer reserved for the things that matter most to us — it’s become a default setting. We see it as a personal virtue, but it’s actually just a mode of survival, given everything that’s working against us in modern life.

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Exciting news! My newsletters are now available in audio form for paid subscribers. For £4 a month, you’ll receive me doing a dramatic reading (ofc!) of the newsletter, so you can take steps to disengage from optimisation culture while brushing your teeth (is now a good time to admit that I listen to podcasts in the shower?)

When I was 16, I asked for a rose gold Michael Kors watch for my birthday — a statement that gives away the fact I went through adolescence during the 2010s. Not only because that shade of metal and the ubiquity of Michael Kors is synonymous with that decade, but because it was normal, cool even, to wear an actual watch — you know, one with a ticking hand and numbers circled around it’s edges.

The 2010s was the last decade when the majority of people wore an analogue device to tell the time. Now, like almost every other aspect of our lives, it’s been digitised.

46% of adults in the UK use at least one piece of technology to improve their health. Almost everyone I know has a tiny screen permanently strapped to their wrist.

It started with the FitBit, which launched in 2009 as a pedometer with very basic sleep tracking functions. Quickly, it became something more, introducing advanced features that can tell you exactly how you performed in a workout and the intricacies of your night’s sleep. Then came the Apple Watch, the ultimate smartwatch. Initially most exciting because it was an extended version of your phone — why have one screen when you can have two?! — its main selling point nowadays is its health tracking features.

In 2026, wearables are more sophisticated than ever. The Oura Ring has become the ultimate status symbol for the wellness girlie. And then there’s the Whoop, which provides users with a daily ‘readiness score’, based on how well their body is functioning (AKA daily validation that you’re optimising well).

I’ve been a health and fitness journalist for half a decade and I’ve been offered a freebie of what feels like every health wearable out there, certainly all of the ones I’ve listed above. But I’ve never had any interest in receiving or wearing one.

And now, as I see people obsessing over their sleep data and allowing their recovery scores to dictate how they spend their days, I’m so glad I trusted my instincts when I decided health trackers weren’t for me. That instinct was: I don’t need to know all of this information about my body.

I’m really not trying to be all high and mighty and there’s nothing inherently wrong with wearing a fitness tracker. But with the BBC running stories on people who are addicted to these devices, and phenomenons like Orthosomnia — which refers to people who are obsessed with tracking their sleep data, which is, in turn, messing up their sleep — becoming mainstream, it feels like their potential to improve some parts of our health might not be worth the risks they pose to stress levels and sense of joie de vivre.

Even before I spent my nine to five interviewing health experts and researching medical studies, I had a a general sense of what was good for my health: eating whole foods, walking, lifting weights and getting around eight hours of sleep. My feeling when health trackers first became the norm was, why overcomplicate it? I’m in touch with my body and routine enough to know if I’ve slept badly, or haven’t moved my body enough. I don’t need a fancy piece of tech to tell me that.

In fact, the idea of a watch sending me a notification to tell me that my workout burned fewer calories than I’d imagined — even though I pushed myself, lifted weights I deemed to be impressive and had a nice time — feels demoralising. The thought that I’d need to go for a walk round the block to close a ring or achieve an extra 1000 steps seems, frankly, a little silly.

And as well as worrying that wearing a fitness watch would push me to workout more than I feel is right for me or strive for an unnecessary amount of steps, I also sense that things could go too far the other way. Waking up to a sleep score that is below optimal, and a notification advising me to skip the gym, even though I feel rested and ready to take on the day, sounds stressful. As does the idea that I can check if my heart rate is higher than usual, with no context as to why that might be. The nocebo effect — experiencing negative side effects or symptoms because you expect or fear them — is real. A small study found that patients who used smart watches to track their heart rate would see a concerning figure on their watch, worry about it and, in turn, their heart rate would go up further, creating a cycle of panic that is detrimental to both physical and mental health.

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On top of that, recent research from The University Of Newcastle found that using fitness tracking technology is associated with anxiety, body dissatisfaction and rumination. Researchers also found that the use of wearable devices can lead to disordered eating and excessive exercise. They concluded: “At this point, people are no longer exercising to feel good, but to make their data look right. This kind of obsession may end up harming people’s behavioural wellbeing.”

And honestly, the whole thing just feels a little bit dystopian. I don’t want to be melodramatic and sound the alarm bells, but when we look at how extreme wellness routines are becoming and how normalised tracking devices are, does it not just feel… off? As we enter an era of technology so advanced that science fiction novelists one hundred years ago couldn’t have imagined it, we need to take a step back and ask ourselves, is this really what we want? Is it serving us? Because we don’t have to take part.

Alongside sporting my flashy Michael Kors watch in 2015, I was also reading George Orwell’s 1984. Like many other teenagers, I staked a claim to it, became invested in politics and started worrying about the surveillance state. I’ll say it again: my younger self had very good instincts.

And look, I’m not trying to say that wearing a fitness tracker will ruin your life, or civilisation as a whole… not yet, anyway. They can be a way to help you make healthier choices and motivate you to take care of your body. But let this be a reminder that you can take the tracker off. The world won’t end if you miss out on a day or even a week’s sleep data.

If you have found yourself obsessing about your health and want to snap out of it, removing the device from your wrist or finger might be the first step to breaking away from self-optimisation culture.

Although my taste in analogue watches has changed over the years (we really ruined rose gold for ourselves, didn’t we?) I stand by the fact that they’re very cool, chic even — as is refusing to buy into the health optimisation machine.

There’s been a lot of conversations happening over the past week about just how toxic self-optimisation culture is, thanks to Steven Bartlett’s melodramatic claim that drinking a few glasses of wine ruined three days of his life. And honestly – I’m relieved. As someone who has been writing about optimisation culture for the best part of nine months, I sometimes feel like I’m talking into the ether. So I’m delighted that more people are realising that it’s one of the great plagues of modern times.

I started How To Be Less because, as a health and wellness journalist, I was writing a lot of articles designed to help people improve their lives, which sounds all well and good. But after going through a period of burnout, I realised that there is simply too much advice out there around how we can self-improve (much of which I was contributing to). This guidance meant that I I was prioritising an optimised life — one in which I was maximising my time, energy, productivity levels and health — rather than a happy one. And it was making me miserable.

I wanted a space on the internet to interrogate this culture. I was and am perplexed at how we’ve reached a point whereby efficiency is the metric by which we measure the success of our lives. I wanted to think about how we got here, and where we go next.

A lot of the content I’ve seen around self-optimisation this week points out how absurd optimisation is. But the solutions are often too simplistic. “Just relax!”, Loosen up!” “Ditch your Whoop and eat McDonalds everyday!” But it isn’t that simple. For so many of us, optimisation is embedded into the way we live our day-to-day lives and think about ourselves. It’s not as easy as just taking a day off and doing something fun, or having a big night out every now and then.

In fact, stepping away from self-optimisation culture is a lot harder than keeping up with it. There’s no health tracker you can wear on your wrist that will tell you you’re doing it right. Leaning back into being human and living a happy life for the sake of it is complicated, especially if optimisation has become part of who you are without you even realising it.

Plus, there are some merits to wellness culture. Exercising more, eating healthier and getting better sleep is good for us. It’s not that we should stop caring about these things altogether, just a little less than a lot of us currently do.

In fact, if I’ve learnt anything from trying to disengage from self-optimisation culture, it’s that it isn’t just as easy as slowing things down, switching your brain off or quitting wellness. Self-improvement can play a role in our lives and I’m not suggesting that we never work hard again, or give up on anything that involves pushing ourselves.

To get over optimisation culture, we can’t go under it, we can’t go over it – we have to go through it. And by that,I mean that we have to tackle it with a critical lens. It’s not as easy as optimise or don’t. It’s about thinking deeply about what it means to build a happy and fulfilling life, which is confusing at the best of times, never mind when there’s billions of pounds of wellness marketing being shoved down our throats on a daily basis.

That’s where How To Be Less comes in. This is a space to think about the various ways optimisation culture impacts our lives. It’s not just about strict gym routines or cutting back on alcohol. Optimisation shapes what we do with our free time, it impacts how we process our emotions, it distorts how we think about taking care of ourselves and it’s fuelling various political crises.

I think the key to untangling yourself from the web of self-optimisation is realising how deep it runs societally. But it’s also a deeply personal journey, and I share plenty about my various attempts to step away from self-optimisation culture too. I’ve written about how it shaped my self-esteem, my ability to spend time with myself and some of my biggest life decisions.

Free subscribers to How To Be Less will receive essays on all of these topics and much, much more in their inbox on the first three Friday mornings of each month.

And starting this month, I’m excited to be launching a new offering as part of my newsletter: Unoptimise, a monthly guide to meaningfully stepping away from optimisation culture, which will feature:

• A few ways I’m unpacking my own relationship with self-optimisation each month.

• Journal prompts to help you consider your own relationship with optimisation.

• Articles, book and podcast recommendations to help you think more critically about wellness culture.

• And, a guest feature from someone wise and wonderful, who is successfully unoptimising their life.

Paid subscribers will receive Unoptimise in their inboxes on the final Friday of each month for £4 per month. From next week, paid subscribers will also have access to audio versions of every newsletter.

I’d really appreciate you becoming a free or a paid subscriber and I’d love to hear from you in the comments about what you enjoy about How To Be Less, and what you’d like to see more of.

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Thanks for reading!

Alice x

About a year ago, I was sitting in a pub garden with two of my closest friends. The orange glow of the outdoor heaters lit up their faces and I was continuously using the top of my index finger to wipe tears of laughter away from my cheeks. I checked my phone, it was nearly midnight, and a rush of panic came over me. I needed to go home. I’d had at least two margaritas, and an Aperol Spritz and if I drank any more, or stayed up any later, my ability to function the following day would be compromised. I didn’t have anything that important to do — I wanted to workout, clean my flat and run errands — but the fact I might not be able to do them very well if I was hungover was enough for me to decidedly pay my share for the drinks, give my friends a big squeeze and make my way to the tube.

It was an objectively sensible decision, one that no one could really turn their nose up at. I wasn’t just thinking about my productivity, but my health too — I sleep badly after drinking and if I didn’t go to the workout class I had booked, I’d feel bad about myself, and probably spend the day feeling lethargic.

Readers of this newsletter will know that Steven Bartlett — of Diary Of A Ceo fame — is one of my most loathed public figures, due to his scaremongering content around health and productivity. So I was surprised to find myself relating to him this week. On a recent episode of his podcast, he claimed that drinking three glasses of wine “ruined a few days of his life”. Despite his painful, clickbait-driven hyperbole, his thinking around why some Friday night drinks were so drastic is not dissimilar to what mine once was:

“I got worse sleep that night, and then because I got worse sleep that night, I ate more poorly the next day. I didn’t go to the gym that day or the day after because I felt really bad.”

@dudewhoinvestsSteven Bartlett says a few glasses of wine ruined the next 3 days of his life 🍷 

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The notorious podcaster is now being widely mocked online for his obsession with tracking health data and joyless approach to life. But frankly, I think it reflects the way more of us think than we’d like to admit. 49% of young adults choose no & low-alcohol drinks now, nearly double the amount of people since 2018 and in 2022, 26% of 16 to 24 year olds reported not drinking alcohol in the previous 12 months.

Although the reasons for our generational sobriety are no-doubt layered — drinking is expensive and we’re collectively broke, and a lot of young people are genuinely looking for more meaningful ways to spend their time — so much of this is driven by self-optimisation culture. In 2025, nearly 30% of Gen-Z and millennials said they were prioritising wellness “a lot more” than a year earlier. And you only have to look at what’s trending on TikTok (fibremaxxing, Pilates, red light therapy masks, staying-in routines) to see that there’s a huge shift in how 20-somethings think about their lives and happiness now, compared to 10 years ago.

It goes without saying that excessive drinking is bad for you. But I refuse to believe that being hungover or tired occasionally will negatively impact your health. If it does, its effects are nowhere near as drastic as placing limits on life-affirming moments with people you love.

As a health and wellness journalist who writes regularly about workouts, nutrition trends and products that will improve your health, I probably sound like a hypocrite, especially given my own recent tendency to prioritise self-optimisation in favour of lingering in joyful moments. But having interviewed hundreds of experts over the years, I can confidently say that taking more time to do things you enjoy (even if they have a negative impact on various trackable health markers) will make you a healthier person.

In fact, one of the biggest studies on longevity – the Hallmarks Of Aging – was recently updated to acknowledge the impact of stress and social isolation on the way we age. I interviewed biologist Dr Matt Kaeberlein for a story in Fit&Well last year and he told me that this was the first time “a non cellular or molecular process was proposed as a hallmark of aging”. Before this, the study mainly focussed on fairly complicated health issues such as stem cell exhaustion and DNA damage. “I don’t know that we completely understand the biological mechanisms that underlie this relationship, but the data is clear and it just keeps coming out stronger and stronger and stronger: the people who have strong social relationships and strong social ties are likely to live longer and avoid age related diseases than people who are socially isolated,” Dr Kaeberlein told me.

Crucially, forming and maintaining relationships can be a lot more complicated than getting a good night’s sleep consistently. That’s why my leaving the pub early to go to bed was — and I’m wary that I’m channeling Bartlett levels of drama queen here — not only detrimental to my happiness, but probably to my long-term health too.

One of the things that has helped me disengage from the cult of self-optimisation is realising that trying to constantly optimise myself was not only bad for my soul, it was probably worsening my physical and mental health too. It’s why the 101 year old who smokes cigarettes and drinks a can of coke everyday is doing so well — she’s unbothered, which is just as crucial to a long, healthy life as eating whole foods and lifting weights. And if doing those things religiously is making you very stressed, they’re probably not going to have their desired effect anyway.

That brings me to the thesis of this newsletter, that being hungover is actually very good for you. Granted, binge-drinking and spending a day with your head over the toilet probably isn’t the best idea. But having a few wines, followed by a rough sleep and spending the next day eating your favourite food in bed and binge-watching sit-coms will likely make you a happier, less stressed, healthier person.

(and yes, this is your sign to go for a pint in the sun this evening. you’re welcome!)

The soft life started as a social media trend – a hashtag women used to go alongside videos of their cozy reading snugs, relaxed evening routines, or photos of them in nature. It was a way to romanticise your life and combat stress, negativity and burnout. There’s now 1.1 million posts with the tag #softlife on TikTok, and it’s quickly become a lifestyle for many people, rather than just a social media aesthetic. And a widely popular one at that. You can see the appeal; the soft life encourages you to switch off your brain, to forgo responsibilites and focus on the things that make you feel safe and calm.

I’ve written about my experience trying to embrace the soft life, which, to summarise, basically made my life feel quite meaningless. Turns out, rejecting anything that makes you feel even remotely stressed or physically tired isn’t a very balanced, purposeful way to live. One of the things that made me feel stressed and tired was engaging with politics. I’ve always kept up with politics and invested my time and energy into it (attending protests, canvassing for Labour before they lost their entire backbone and sharing petitions on Instagram stories on a daily basis, much to the annoyance of, I’m sure, everyone who followed me). But the soft life mantra was to disengage with the outside world. Reading the news will make you feel stressed and you won’t have time to attend a protest on Saturday afternoon because you’ll be too busy catching up on the you-time (reading, gardening, watching TV) you lacked during the week. So I lost touch, accidentally on purpose, with politics. And I don’t think I’m the only one who is using this lifestyle as a way to opt out of politics.

It’s strange, really, because the soft life encourages fairly radical ideas: decentring work from your life, rejecting materialism, and saying no to hustle culture, to name a few. So then why is the soft life movement wholly apolitical?

Is this all a trap?

Not to go all feminist conspiracy theorist, but it’s concerning that the world of the soft life is so heavily marketed towards women and it just so happens to encourage withdrawing from politics. Last year, some black male creators started posting about their experiences with the soft life, but this was a fairly short-lived trend, compared to the thousands of women who are making it their entire business model and the millions more who base many of their decisions around the lifestyle.

What’s even more concerning is that the soft life doesn’t always simply involve taking a step back from work, it’s often linked to giving up your career and handing over your financial autonomy to your partner, if you’re in a position to do so. The idea that this is an apolitical choice is bonkers, particularly as a 2024 study found that 29% of women feel trapped in a relationship due to a lack of financial independence. With conservatism and misogyny on the rise, embracing the soft life without acknowledging the personal and political implications of doing so feels genuinely dangerous.

The intense focus on self-preservation and self-improvement the soft life encourages also serves as a distraction from the many ways in which women’s rights are being stripped back institutionally in both the UK and the US. Sophie Gilbert, who wrote the book Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves, spoke about this interestingly in an episode of the podcast If I Speak that came out last year:

“You can stop focusing on yourself as something that needs a total overhaul or a total reformation and turn that gaze outwards and think, if I had the power, what would I do? What would I make better for myself and for everyone?”

Why community is the best nervous system regulator

Because going to all that effort to make your life feel softer, to make yourself feel more relaxed and make your life easier, might actually make you feel worse. I know there’s already a million Substacks preaching community is inconvenience, but caring for people other than yourself – family, friends, strangers – will probably make you feel better than constantly thinking about yourself and falling into the self-optimisation trap.

I don’t think this means abandoning the soft life. I think it means we should take all the things we like about it and apply them to the way we want the world to be. Because honestly, it feels kind of icky to be striving for the soft life so militantly in your personal life, when the idea of decentring work and taking more time for yourself feels like an impossibility for a large majority of people in the current political climate. The soft life is an essentially anti-capitalist idea, and I think if the millions of people preaching its benefits on social media saw it as a human right, rather than something they’re personally entitled to, the whole thing could be pretty revolutionary.

What would happen if the soft life wasn’t just tending to your home or garden to make it feel more liveable, but tending to your community? What if it was about making the world a nicer, softer place to be?

Soft and angry

I know that when we’re stressed or burnt out, even thinking about politics or your personal potential to make small changes in the world can feel impossible. But doing so can not only make your life more meaningful, but it’s often far more effective at helping you forget about the small things that are troubling you. And I’m not saying that we should give up on the soft things that bring us joy – long baths, afternoons on the sofa reading and screen-free days in nature – I’m just saying that they shouldn’t be the only thing we turn to to deal with existential dread, and nor should they be an excuse to forgo political responsibility.

I know that switching off in the way that soft life influencers encouraged made me feel numb. Because unfortunately, you can’t selectively turn off parts of your brain. Flicking the off switch on your intellectual capacity and political awareness might also leave your sense of empathy, purpose and hope in a dark room.

Nothing makes me feel more at peace than knowing I’m living by the politics and the principles I truly care about, and I’m doing as much as I can to ensure I’m not the only one who has access to my many, many privileges. So let this be a reminder that you can live the soft life and feel angry and empowered about the world. In fact, if you’re living the soft life and not feeling like that, you’re probably doing it wrong.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. How has your relationship with politics changed over the years? And how do you manage to engage with politics with looking after your brain? It’s a delicate balance, but such an important one. Please do share your thoughts and experiences!

I spent the last five years building a life in London. I moved to the city newly single with no job, no friends and I left with my dream career, an overwhelmingly busy social calendar and a boyfriend I adore. Having found all of these things in one place, it would have made sense to stay. But I found that as my life became more settled, my impulse was to abandon it. It felt like I’d completed a project – the renovation of my early 20s self – and it was time to move on to the next one.

That impulse is why I’m currently writing this newsletter surrounded by boxes in a flat in a brand new city. It doesn’t feel like starting from scratch to quite the same extent – I moved with my boyfriend, I have one friend in the city and I can continue working the same job here. But I think I underestimated just how new everything would feel. I have to use Google Maps every time I leave the house. I’m sitting in the wrong seat at my local coffee shop (the light is creating a glare on my screen, no plug socket). I don’t know where the toilets are at the yoga studio.

Everything is new, which is equally daunting and exciting. I’ve been here before, which is comforting, because I know that, soon, these will be the most familiar spaces to me in the world. But the effort of starting over has me wondering, why do some of us feel such a strong urge to do it? And is it worth it?

Every time I meet someone new – so almost every person I come into contact with right now – I have to explain why I’ve moved to Bristol, which is vaguely stressful, as it means I have to justify to myself and them why I picked up a life I loved so much and placed it somewhere else. People tend to ask me if I moved for work, or to be closer to family, neither of which are factors that played into my decision. The truth is, I don’t know exactly why I find myself in the south-west of England. I just wanted to move out of London and thought Bristol was a place I might enjoy living.

I’m 27, which feels like an age where you should still have the freedom to flip your life on its head and try something new. But given that my life was heading in the direction of settling down, I think people are surprised that I’d disrupt that process. And I’m not naive to the fact that it’s unusual to find yourself in a place where you’re content with your life – changing that for no good reason is risky. But the impulse was there and I followed it.

I don’t think that I’m necessarily someone who is inclined to contentment. I’m always thinking ahead and planning how I could make my life that little bit better. I can’t imagine finding somewhere that I’m happy to stay forever (although, I hope I find somewhere that I’d like to stay for a long time at some point in the future). This trait is what makes me so open to new experiences and what has made my life so fulfilling and exciting. But I also find myself genuinely envious of people who decided where they wanted to live for the rest of their lives at the age of 22 and have never faltered on that. I crave that kind of certainty over what I want and who I should be.

I wonder if the drive to start over comes from a sense of confidence in who I am — a feeling that I know that I’ll be fine wherever I go and I deserve the best. Or perhaps, it’s just running away from my problems; an assumption that moving somewhere new will make the hard parts of life disappear, that I can leave my insecurities and frustrations tethered to a city or a flat and move on without them.

Mostly, starting over for no good reason feels like a huge privilege. When my parents reached 27, there would have been an immense pressure to settle down and follow a traditional path – this is a pressure I’m yet to experience and I’m so grateful for the freedom that allows. Making the biggest life decisions based solely on what I want is autonomy my teenage self could only have dreamed off. The fact I’ve followed my intuition is something I think my future self will thank me for. It’s also a little bit scary, particularly as we are the first generation for whom there’s no roadmap. We’re the guinea pigs who have been released into the wild. And there’s no one to blame but ourselves if we make the wrong decisions.

When I first moved to London, I cried every day for a week, convinced that I’d made a mistake. Up until that point, the decision making processes around what I wanted to do with my life had been fairly straightforward (go to school, go to sixth form, go to university). When I graduated, I was spellbound by the idea that I could do anything I wanted from that point on. But when I chose something and it happened, that prospect was completely overwhelming. There was no one there to tell me that I’d made the right decision – the idea of just going with it felt too risky. On day seven, I was offered my dream job and I took myself for lunch in Notting Hill (the most quintessentially London area for someone who had mostly experienced the city via film). Something clicked and I’ve never looked back.

One week in, and I’m fortunately feeling very pleased with myself for moving to Bristol. There’s been minimal tears, and although I’m still facing that slightly paralysing feeling of “Is this the right decision?”, I know from experience that it will probably work out.

Despite being very happy in London, there were a number of reasons that made me want to leave the city, which I wrote about in another newsletter. Bristol is still a big city objectively, but it’s so quiet! I can hear the birdsong each morning. I can walk to the supermarket without sharing the pavement with hundreds of other frantic people. We have our own garden! So far, starting over feels pretty good.

No one reads books anymore. In fact, in the UK, more than a third of adults say they have given up reading for pleasure. You don’t need me to tell you why that is. It’s because of the insane amount of time we spend on our phones, of course. But what if our rapidly increasing screen time is also the reason why we’re all about to start reading more?

This was the argument writer and The Times columnist James Marriott posed on a podcast I recently listened to. Marriott went Substack viral last year for an essay called The Dawn Of The Post Literate society, arguing that the fact we’re all reading less has severe social and political consequences (he has a book coming out on the same topic). He believes that it will impact – and, in fact, is already impacting – our cognitive capacity, ability to think critically, and be creative.

It’s scary stuff. But one point of optimism he found was that the rise of bad things often leads to the rise of good things. The example he used was junk food and exercise, both of which rose in popularity in the latter part of the 20th century. McDonalds became mainstream at the same time when people were signing up to 24-hour gyms en masse. Why? Because people knew junk food was having a negative impact on their health and they wanted, needed, to do something about it.

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Marriott believes that the same thing could happen with screen time and reading, whereby our phones are the equivalent to junk food and reading that of exercise. It makes sense. 77% of Gen-Z say they spend too much time on their phones In fact, there’s so many products, apps and schemes designed to help you stay off your phone now, that it’s quickly becoming its own market sector.

People are worried about their worsening attention spans, about brainrot and the decline of original thinking. Books are the obvious solution to this. The only issue with this thesis is that, historically, the primary motivator for working out has been changing your appearance. Even now, in the age of wellness, when people are more dedicated than ever to health optimisation, working out and eating well always has the added bonus of helping you conform to societal beauty standards. Reading does not possess that shiny selling point.

However, in certain online spaces, reading is becoming a status symbol. Over the past few months, a new genre of influencer has emerged: the intellectual influencer. She’s sharing her journaling ecosystem. She’s recommending documentaries that will expand your brain. Mostly, she’s reading, often. She’s making books cool again.

These bookish influencers often position their videos as the antithesis to brain rot content. Vogue Business recently published a feature about these content creators and they interviewed Death To Stock’s culture researcher Agus Panzoni, who said that they represent a new cultural movement:

“During a moment defined by anti-intellectualism, escapism, and AI tools that let you skip cognitive work entirely... intellectual creators are doing something kinda countercultural.”

It’s Marriott’s theory in action: this subset of content creators are recommending reading as a way to offset the damage our phones are doing, and they’re taking off. There’s over 47,000 posts with the tag #intellectual on TikTok. My question is: do they have longevity and the potential for widespread appeal?

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The reason I ask is because I am deeply concerned about the potential demise of my intellectual capacity at the hands of my phone. Yet, I still find myself deep in doomscrolling holes during the time I’ve set aside for reading or writing. Much like how many of us are motivated to go to the gym on a Monday morning, having had a word with ourselves about our goals, but find our motivation waning off midweek because it feels too hard, opting for a night on the couch with your phone is always going to be the easier option than setting aside time to run and read. And the consequences of scrolling don’t, yet, feel as dire or urgent as the consequences of a sedentary lifestyle.

I’m also unsure if it’s helpful to frame reading as a means to an end. Reading is and always has been the most joyful, life-affirming part of my life. I hate to think that people are only picking up books because they feel like they have to in order to claw themselves back from their phone addictions.

But Marriott argues that just as running is also very hard and unenjoyable for most people at first, but can quickly become deeply meaningful and fun as you progress, the same might happen with people’s relationships with books. Perhaps we are going to have to make a real effort to read now. The digital worlds that exist in the palms of our hand mean we don’t rely on books out of boredom, or for entertainment, connection, or education, which has been their purpose since they became mainstream. We’re going to have to develop a drive to read, where the need has disappeared.

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One positive is that I’ve certainly noticed that the content that has appeared on my For You Page over the last six months is far more interesting and thought-provoking than it once was, which is partly down to the shift in what we expect from influencers and the popularity of ‘intellectual’ content. But ultimately, their recommendations and ideas are filtered through algorithms that promote content that is simple and, often, apolitical, so perhaps there’s a limit to its revolutionary potential.

But we’ve got to start somewhere and frankly, I’m here for critical thinking content-creators. The revolution will not be televised — it’s happening on #booktok.

Thanks so much for reading! I’d love to hear your thoughts on this approach to reading. Is it something you’ve already adopted or is the idea of treating reading like the gym slightly painful for you? I’d also love to chat more about intellectual influencers — do they have potential for good and for change? Or do you think it lacks soul? Please share your thoughts in the comments!

For a long time, I felt as though I was unable to properly appreciate nature. I still feel like that, sometimes. Sure, I enjoy a countryside walk and will gladly take a two-hour train to sit by the sea on a warm spring day. But on more than one occasion, I’ve found myself at the top of a mountain or the bottom of a waterfall experiencing envy at the sense of awe the other people around me are ostensibly experiencing.

In those moments, I’m often captivated, not by the natural beauty in front of me, but the workings of my inner world. By that I mean, I’m fixated on the thoughts buzzing around my head. It sounds vain and it feels egotistical. “Concentrate!!!!” I’ll tell myself, confused at why I’m thinking so deeply about a conversation I had with my friend a few days earlier about the institution of marriage, when before me there is nothing short of a natural wonder of the world.

I came to realise, although I enjoy being in nature, what I find most interesting in life is people. It’s why walking through London’s Barbican Estate and witnessing the many lives within it fascinates me just as much, if not more, as the thousands of waterfalls nesting in mountainous structures at Milford Sound on the south island of New Zealand. Or why when doing the Seven Sisters hike in East Sussex, I barely took in the striking cliffside views because I was so busy listening in to the many conversations around me – a couple who had travelled down from London for a second date, or a father trying to convince his begrudging partner and small children that there really wasn’t that much of the walk left.

For a long time, I assumed that my interest in people and relationships, and desire to witness them as a fly on the wall, made city dwelling the obvious choice for me. But despite having never appreciated its grandeur as much as the next person, I feel an unparalleled sense of calm when I’m somewhere quiet and green and I can hear water running or crashing. This, in itself, was and is enough justification to be in nature as much as possible. But I was still hungry to experience the wonder of nature in the same way that other people do.

The solution was something that has historically helped me solve most of life’s bugbears and dilemmas: reading novels. As I was spending more time in nature, I was increasingly drawn to fictional characters who were doing the same. Their reverence for the beach, or the forest or the mountains quickly rubbed off on me. I was experiencing the awe I’d long craved vicariously.

I realised fiction was having such a profound effect on my feelings towards nature when I was reading Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell while travelling New Zealand at the start of this year. Now infamous, largely thanks to the film, for how totally devastating it is — and rest assured I sobbed for at least an hour in the cinema in February — my favourite thing about the book was how vivid its descriptions of the outside world are.

The protagonist, Agnes, is painted so vividly, and I felt deeply connected to her. Agnes, in turn, feels deeply connected to the forest she grew up in. When I was outside, I came to think of her relationship with the woodlands often, as though she was a close friend or family member. The way the roots of a tree were formed would remind me of a scene from the book and they’d suddenly become far more complex and interesting. O’Farrell was even responsible for my newfound interest in birds, something my boyfriend has unsuccessfully been trying to cultivate for a long time. One day, he pointed out a Falcon and we were both surprised when my head shot up from my phone: “Where?!” I asked, before explaining that the bird played an important role in the fictional world I was currently living in.

I probably don’t need to tell you that Hamnet quickly became one of my most beloved books. But this wasn’t the first or even the second time I’d tried to pick it up. I’d made a good attempt at reading it on a couple of occasions last year, but had felt entirely disconnected to the world it depicted as I slowly trawled through its early chapters in my south London flat, the sounds of the city ever-present.

I believe that coming to a book at the right time is so important to your experience with it. Reading a book that reflects the world you’re living in, even slightly, can be such a special experience. If you plan on spending time in nature soon and yearn to feel more connected to the natural world, I’d recommend finding a novel that captures your experience. It doesn’t necessarily need to be set in the same city, country or climate. Perhaps it simply captures the way you want to experience a place, or a feeling.

Below are some of the novels that have cultivated my relationship with nature, along with a few notes on the ambience they create.

Six books that will expand your relationship with nature

Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell

The storyline…

Loosely based on William Shakespeare’s family, this novel is set in Stratford-Upon-Avon in the 1600s. It follows Agnes, who has a reputation as the town’s “forest witch”, as she meets her husband to-be and starts a family with him. The story is centred around the insurmountable grief the family experiences after losing one of their children.

The ideal reading location…

In the forest on a moody day, guarded from the light rain by trees so tall you can barely see their leaves. Foraging is optional, but encouraged.

Expect to feel…

A sense of wonder about the natural world around you and how much history it holds.

Atonement by Ian McEwan

The storyline…

It’s 1935 and in the stately home in the English countryside, 13-year-old Briony Tallis is mortified to find her sister, Cecilia and her lover, Robbie, together in the library. Confused by what she’s seen, she accuses Robbie of rape. What follows is a love story that is interrupted by the Second World War and a heartbreaking family saga.

The ideal reading location…

This novel belongs to the English countryside. I can’t help but fantasise about lying on a bench outside of a National Trust property, with one view of a stately home like the one you’re reading about, and another of the rolling hills.

Expect to feel…

Thrilled and heartbroken, by people and nature, in equal measure.

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett

The storyline…

Three grown-up daughters are locked down on their family’s cherry farm due to the pandemic. To keep them entertained, their mother tells them the story of one of the great romances of her youth, which shapes and changes the way the young women think about love and relationships.

The ideal reading location…

Not in walking distance of a cherry farm? Any expansive field will do. The more one-note the scenery, the better. A field or a lake that feels like it goes on forever is ideal.

Expect to feel…

Warm inside out and reassured that nature is always there as respite.

The Mountains Sing by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai

The storyline…

This is a generational novel following the Trần family through 20th century Vietnam. It switces between the grandaughter’s perspective growing up in Hanoi amidst the Vietnam War and her grandmother’s experience raising a family during the 1950s Land Reform, exploring how their trauma has shaped them and their relationship.

The ideal reading location…

Despite its title, hiking isn’t necessary to soak up the world of The Mountains Sing. Rather, its best to let this devastating tale unravel you somewhere you feel safe enough to feel. A garden or a park is enough.

Expect to feel…

Deeply grateful that you can experience peace, and spoiled by the many ways in which being outside provides that.

The Covenant Of Water by Abraham Verghese

The storyline…

An expansive tale documenting the lives of three generations of a family living in Kerala India, spanning 77 years of their lives. The family have a curse called “the Condition”, which means at least one person in each generation will die by drowning. Although this is the central premise of the book, its exploration of relationships and life in Kerala are also central, and often far more pressing.

The ideal reading location…

Somewhere very warm, or somewhere very cold when you’d like to imagine you’re in a much hotter climate. Under a tree, so you’re not exposed to the sun, but you’re constantly aware of its presence, is best.

Expect to feel…

Transported to a land that is complicated, beloved and empathetic.

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

The storyline…

A novel that reads more like short stories, it follows retired maths teacher Olive Kitteridge and traces her relationships to the people in her life and town of Crosby, Maine. The book focuses on her marriage, relationship with her son and journey with aging and grief, for the most part.

The ideal reading location…

By water, ideally the coast. Olive’s stories are best paired with a sea breeze and the sounds of childlike laughter.

Expect to feel…

Charmed by the intricacies of small town living and reminded how simple the things that really make you happy are.

Thanks so much for reading. Please do share the novels that depict and explore nature in interesting ways in the comments — they don’t necessarily need to be ‘nature novels’ (most of these aren’t), but I’d love to hear about any reading experiences that have helped you appreciate the outside world.

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Not to go all Hannah Hovarth and make a voice of my generation sweeping claim, but I feel like we might be worrying about ourselves too much. As a journalist who mainly writes about wellness and dating, almost all of my stories are centred around tackling our collective anxieties. They tend to revolve around the same things: worsening attention spans, bad sleep quality, a lack of human connection (all worthy concerns). But recently I’ve noticed a frenzy around a new issue that is apparently disproportionately affecting young people: we don’t have any hobbies.

One TikTok user shared a video claiming that “99% of the people I meet nowadays have no hobbies or interests besides overconsumption and social media”. With plenty of other people echoing the same sentiment, a movement has begun. We’re actively searching for hobbies. TikTok user @syd_anastasia_ has started a series called “Hot Girls Have Hobbies”, sharing new hobbies she’s trying each week, while @jaceyadler is sharing hobby ideas to “cure your brain rot”.

Because we can’t enjoy anything in 2026 without maxxing out on it, there’s also hobbymaxxing, which involves packing your schedule with an extensive list of activities – TikTok user @jazz.madison manages to attend piano lessons, ballet classes and wine school each week.

@jazz.madisonhobbies > crashout

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This obsession with hobbies stems from the same thing that we can track pretty much all of our issues right now back to: our screen time. 76% of Americans believe that they spend too much time on their phones. With the average person aged 18 to 29 spending 7 hours and 5 minutes per day on their phone in 2026, it’s easy to see why there’s so much panic around screen time. The consensus is that our little handheld computers are creating unique problems for our generation.

Hobbies are ostensibly the solution. Trends like ‘going analogue’, which took off at the start of this year and saw people searching for intentionally offline activities, suggest that a lot of people are looking to hobbies to cure their phone addictions. Hobbies also have the added bonus of making you appear to be a more interesting person, with plenty of videos online framed as self-development (“in a year of sophistication, all of the cool girls are replacing doomscrolling with intellectual hobbies” is a quote from one a TikTok video posted by the infamous Florrie Tyler, known for her girls in north London itineraries).

So is seeking out hobbies a helpful way to improve your quality of life and take yourself offline? Or is it just another attempt at self-optimisation, for a generation obsessed with improving ourselves?

Panic at the Apple Store!

People in their 20s and 30s right now are experiencing different, and in many ways more complicated, challenges than the ones their parents and grandparents dealt with. The housing crisis, unemployment rates and the pandemic have made things precarious, to say the least. But although there are many ways we can stake our claim to singularity, I’m not sure that our lack of hobbies is one of them. There’s an idealistic idea of the pre-phone era: people spent more time in nature, they read books and pursued creative passions. Or, perhaps they were out at cocktail bars every night, meeting new people and having lots of sex.

The reality is, in 2009, the average person spent 8 hours and 55 minutes watching TV each day, according to Nielsen. That’s nearly two hours more than 20-somethings spend on their phone. I’m not suggesting we should use this statistic to justify our phone usage. But it might help us question if the current level of mass hysteria around how they impact our lives is necessary.

I interviewed digital culture academic Dr Ysabel Gerrard for a story that was published in Mashable last year about why Gen-Z are buying into landline phones. She researches young people’s experiences with social media and she told me that the scaremongering narratives around screen time often confuse our individual relationships with our phones:

“Young people are told that they are ‘addicted’ to their smartphones, or ‘addicted’ to social media – they’re told that this is happening by parents, educators, other adults and in popular culture. They are told the tech they are using is bad for them, not because they even necessarily believe it themselves.”

I wonder if a similar sentiment applies to hobbymaxxing. Are we actually yearning for new skills to enrich our lives? Or do we just feel like that’s what we should be doing? Because it seems like people have always found meaningless ways to fill their time, even without the abyss of the For You Page. Perhaps that’s just part of being human.

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According to Millie Cowie, founder of interiors marketplace The Chuffed Store, it’s essential to her creativity: “You’ve got to have fallow time to be able to think, feel, process, especially if you’re a creative person, you’ve got to have empty space in your life to get inspired again,” she says. “The busier you are, the more distracted you are and the less you notice stuff.”

Desperately seeking the meaning of life

As is often the case when I’m despairing about life’s big questions, I turned to my mum to ask her about whether she spent her 20s panicking about finding meaning in her 5 to 9s. “I don’t think I had hobbies in my 20s – I can’t remember, anyway,” she told me. “I was working in a graduate job that was full on, so I don’t think I had time for hobbies. And then I had a baby, so I wonder whether your generation is more interested in it because everyone is delaying having children?”

It’s a good point. Perhaps it’s a generational privilege to have the time and space to discover new interests, without the pressure to conform to traditional life paths. Amanda Gunn is the founder of writing collective Inklings and she says that hobbies have helped her find purpose. “I think the innate desire to do things that feel fulfilling and consistently improve can be a nice thing,” she says. “I don’t want to say that without hobbies, purpose is lost. But for me personally, those practices and doing the things I enjoy really grounds me.”

Of course, hobbies can be totally life-affirming, particularly when they offer you a sense of inspiration and excitement. But hobbymaxxing feels more like a method to make your CV or dating profile more interesting. And it doesn’t seem to solve what is arguably the main problem plaguing our generation: a lack of community. 47% of Gen-Z say they feel lonely, more than any other generation, according to new Oxfam research. But many of the activities people are taking up are designed to be done solo – reading, gardening and gaming, to name a few.

My question is: does forcing yourself to find hobbies designed to enrich your life actually enrich your life? Or is it just another meaningless way to self-optimise in an effort to become the best version of you?

I don’t have the answers. As someone who has invested in adult colouring books, taken up tennis and quite literally written a guidebook of new hobbies to try in London over the past year, I’ve certainly felt, and still feel, that actively trying new things is important.

Really, it comes down to being honest with yourself about why you’re doing them. Is it for you or is it for your Instagram feed? Is it for the current version of you or is it for the future version who you’re worried might look back on your life and feel like you didn’t do enough? Happiness is as complicated an emotion as any, but I’m sure there are plenty of people who spend every evening on the couch with loved ones who are just as content as those staying up late for dance classes and French lessons and pottery painting.

Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear your thoughts on this piece in the comments. Have you felt pressure to take up new hobbies? Or maybe you think hobbymaxxing sounds like fun? Please do share your take below.

And if you enjoyed this post, please subscribe to How To Be Less and share the newsletter with someone else who you think might like it.

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The manosphere is absurd. It’s insane. It’s shocking. That’s what I’ve heard from almost everyone who watched Louis Theroux’s recent documentary. Of course, I find it abhorrent and terrifying. But it doesn’t necessarily surprise me. That’s because the manosphere’s guiding principle is one that many of us have come to rely on to think about the way we live: self-optimisation.

Given that the premise of my newsletter is to unpack that very concept, this might feel like an attempt to offer a hot take on a trending topic. But I can assure you it’s not. In fact, every time I see one of the various viral clips of topless men pushing their get-rich-quick schemes and misogynistic worldviews, it dawns on me just how much their traction hinges on the fact that we’ve all become so desensitised to self-optimisation culture.

Granted, wearing a health tracker, attempting to monetise your hobby or planning your free time in your notes app doesn’t feel all that similar to one-way monogamy, looksmaxxing and describing your girlfriend as your ‘dishwasher’. But at the crux of what manosphere influencers teach is that it is imperative to become the best version of yourself. To be a man, you must optimise, is their message. Although, thankfully, most people are guided by better ethics, so many of us also subscribe to the idea that improving ourselves – our health, our brains, our morning routines – is an essential part of being human.

To really understand why the manosphere has been so successful at engaging boys, I don’t think that we should simply be challenging the ideologies they’re promoting. That’s part of it, of course, and it feels increasingly pressing. But we also need to come to terms with what it means that teenagers are seeking out self-optimisation content so desperately.

I’m not the first person to point out that the manosphere’s philosophy is familiar. Journalist Magdalene Taylor recently wrote a story for Playboy arguing that the principles behind the manosphere manifesto isn’t all that different to the 2010s GirlBoss handbook:

The ideas that fueled this misguided era of feminism—that financial achievement is a fundamental marker of success, that hustle culture and individual empowerment are the goal, rather than collective liberation— persist. Only now it’s the Manosphere carrying that torch.

We like to think we’ve moved past toxic GirlBoss culture, which encouraged a relentless dedication to work, money and success. We moved on to something that seemed, at the time, far more worthwhile: a dedication to improving our entire selves (something I explored more in my newsletter on the link between self-optimisation culture and the rise of tradwives). But the GirlBoss didn’t die, nor did she really learn to love herself. She multiplied and spread herself across every area of our lives: she’s That Girl, she’s the peak of your winter arc, she’s putting together your beauty maintenance routine.

Now, the urge to self-optimise comes naturally to so many of us, that it’s quietly seeped into the way young people think about themselves.

I’m not suggesting that the urge to improve yourself as a teenager is unique to Gen Alpha (and some younger members of Gen-Z). I was once a teenager who spent my evenings scrolling photos of very thin women on Tumblr, and believed that plucking my eyebrows would change my life. But for better or worse, teenager’s inclinations towards self-improvement have historically been rooted in vanity.

Now, it goes much deeper. Teens feel pressure to enhance not just their appearance, but their entire selves. And they’re ready to commit to labour intensive processes of working on themselves to get there. Girls as young as 10 are following anti-aging skincare routines. By 14, they’re sharing their pre-school productivity routines. And apparently sixteen year olds are looking for side hustles (which is, confusingly, supposed to be a way to make money alongside a full-time job). And who can blame them? They’re only mirroring the way the adults in their world and on their screens live.

@paulmescalsbfselfcare mornings before school | #downtownboy#videodiaries#productivity#productiveschoolmorningroutine#fp#introvert#teenboy

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In this respect, we’re providing the ideal conditions for the manosphere to thrive. Because teenage boys already believe that humans are operating machines and it’s our jobs to upgrade our own software in order to survive. Of course, they’re susceptible to men on the internet selling them simple ways to do that, with the promise of becoming rich, successful and whole. In October 2025, The Guardian interviewed boys who were engaging with the manosphere one of the interviewees told the reporter: “You felt like you were improving – becoming a better person – by watching the content passively.”

The conviction that self-optimisation is essential to become a real adult, a real human, is what’s driving their interest in figures like Andrew Tate, who are ostensibly providing solutions to what feels like a mammoth undertaking. And given that all the media they consume and most of the people in their lives seem to subscribe to that idea too, why would they listen when we tell them otherwise?

This is why the success of the manosphere is so deeply sad. It’s not just that misogyny is on the rise amongst young people, and years of feminist work is being undone. It’s that teenagers see themselves as unfinished projects. They believe – with a sincerity you can only possess as an adolescent – that they must strive to be more in order to be human.

The only way we can convince them otherwise is to lead by example, to show them that striving for happiness is more important than striving for efficiency. Because it’s all well and good to tell them they’re perfect as they are and don’t need to do anything to change themselves, but the advice might fall flat coming from someone whose sense of peace is derived from the daily score that the tiny computer on their wrist gives them each morning.

Thanks so much for reading. I’d be really interested to hear your thoughts on this in the comments. If you enjoyed this post, please do subscribe to How To Be Less and share the newsletter with someone else who you think might like it.

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