the year of anti-maxxing
on living a life deoptimised and rethinking rest and relaxation
The beginning of the year always invites a fresh start: an opportunity to become better versions of ourselves, to set goals and intentions for what we seek to achieve. With a renewed sense of optimism, it offers us a chance to be at least a little bit better, a little bit more grown and a little bit wiser.
Towards the end of last year, I found myself hurtling through life, subconsciously rushing from one thing to the next and going through the motions without really being present. I have always believed in the philosophy work hard, play hard and pride myself in being able to balance being a career girl, good at my job without trying too hard, but also a carefree party girl who still somehow had her life together. After a gruelling few months, for the first time in a long time, I felt like I wanted to be none of these things.
In December, my body started feeling heavy with burnout. All the things that I always thought I could balance came to a crashing halt. Over the course of the last few months of the year, I had lost my grandmother, visited my family on the other side of the world whilst working remotely on London hours, moved homes and went to Paris on a work trip. Alongside that, I insisted on squeezing in social activities at any possible opportunity because I simply refused to sacrifice my social life because of work. Subconsciously, in trying to have it all, I had put productivity at the centre of my life: not just in work, but also in play and leisure.
A new year offers us a clean slate and an opportunity to become closer to the idealised version of ourselves, but the undeniable truth is that optimisation has seeped into every facet of our lives that it has started to feel like a never ending pursuit for perfection. In an age that has put productivity on a pedestal, it feels like we have reached a point of almost-total burn out. Self-improvement, personal growth, personal development, optimisation - whatever you want to call it - has become the end destination rather than something that is part of the process, perpetuating a vicious cycle.
Even the language of optimisation, which was once strictly limited to the world of work, has slowly but then suddenly overtaken our lives. As we see younger generations withdraw from the dreams of being a girl boss, instead finding alternatives in quiet quitting, anti-ambition or even of being a levelled-up trad wive, optimisation and personal development continue to prevail in our personal lives. Whether it’s through our hobbies, our appearance, our ambitions that exist outside of work, a society that rewards productivity has conditioned us to see every aspect of life through the lens of self-optimisation, leaving little room for simply being.
As technology and consumerism becomes inescapable, even the most personal aspects of our existence are quantified and commodified. Our watches remind us that our body battery is sub-par or that we haven’t moved enough, our phones chide us weekly that our screen time is scarily high. Even our hobbies are quantified: apps like Letterboxd and Goodreads help us to share and track our watching and reading behaviours, turning leisure activities into another metric.
We’re constantly and willingly commodifying our lives to the point that it no longer feels like ours. Sometimes, I feel like I am looking on as an outsider of my own life, watching on as my own existence becomes another data point to track.
Whilst technology has shifted to help us optimise every element of our lives, the beauty and wellness industry continues to exploit our deepest insecurities, as we seek out optimisation in our physical appearance too. Last year, Coralie Forgeat’s The Substance took aim at Hollywood’s and society’s unfair beauty standards, and the lengths that people will go to in their pursuit for youth and beauty. From ozempic being celebrated at the Golden Globes (see Robbie Williams below, he was not joking and I am obsessed), to Bryan Johnson, the biohacking millionaire doing everything in his power to look younger than his own son, it seems impossible to escape the pressure to improve our physical appearance too.
Similarly, at the end of last year, Dazed declared that 2024 was the year of maxxing, referring to the maxxing trend that blew up on social media, using a term that is derived from incel forums. Across TikTok, thousands of videos emerged of young people asking “What can I do to be prettier? Be brutally honest" as viewers commented suggestions ranging from dyeing eyebrows, cutting hair and taking accutane. Responses to these requests also came in video format, with creators taking images of people and giving them digital makeovers with suggestions for how they can ‘glow up’. After years of conversation surrounding natural beauty and body positivity, it seems surreal that we have regressed to seeking out solutions from strangers on the internet to improve our appearance.
Listing an increasingly sinister stream of maxxing trends, ranging from the more innocent sleepmaxxing and moneymaxxing, to the darker world of glorified eating disorders branded as starvemaxxing, Dazed suggests that we might have finally hit peak optimisation.
As we max out on optimisation, it feels like the antidote to the pressures of productivity and self-improvement is to anti-max our lives instead. To free ourselves from our self-imposed expectations of productivity and improvement. To slow down and to even embrace boredom. To reclaim our time as our own.
In My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Ottessa Moshfegh’s protagonist seeks out a year of sleep in the hopes that she would emerge from her slumbers with a fresh perspective on the world, and with more energy to resume her life. Like an extended holiday, the thinking behind this suggests that we spend some time doing nothing and withdrawing from life so that we can resume at our regular pace better and stronger.
But what if I don’t want to return to regular activity after a year? What if I don’t want to be constantly pursuing progression? It doesn’t mean I can’t have ambitions, or have achievements - it just means I don’t want to be defined by them. At the age of 27 - an age that is decidedly chic - I want to feel chic and I want to feel at peace, I want to feel like I’m actually living my life.
In reality, our lives are not something to be optimised, as a tool of productivity and capitalism - they are not something to be quantified, measured and strategised. I want my life to be my own, filled with moments where I am present rather than floating from one commitment to the next. I want the time to be bored, because without that I would continue to constantly feel busy. Yes my life is imperfect and messy and I am imperfect and messy but that’s okay too. I no longer want to rush from one thing to the next, treating my life as a tick-boxing exercise. I want to live my life like it’s mine.
Editor’s note: As I was halfway through writing this piece, the very brilliant Valerie at club reticent wrote this piece on deoptimising and I thoroughly recommend everyone reads it. It’s perfect.
I also loved this piece by Kate Lindsay on being bored
