Optimization Culture is Making Us Fragile

And how a pro golfer's vomiting child and sleepless night didn't stop him from winning the U.S. Open

The latest trend in wearables and optimization culture is a “readiness” score. In theory, devices use biometric data to generate a composite measure of how ready you are to perform on any given day.

Yet the definition of “ready” is wholly contextual: Ready to raise a young child? Write a newsletter? Compete in basketball? Practice guitar? Call clients? Create a business plan? Run a marathon?

Even if these devices knew exactly what ready meant for each of us, I still wouldn’t pay attention to the scores they spit out. The same scores that are marketed to help us perform better have a subtle yet predictable way of hurting our performance.

Self-Fulfilling Prophecies

Consider the golfer JJ Spaun, who recently completed one of the best career turnarounds in modern sport by winning the US Open. In the span of 8 years, he went from being ranked 584 and missing the cut in many big tournaments to capturing a major championship. But the night before he won the US Open, Spaun was awakened at 3 A.M. by his 2-year-old daughter Violet, who had fallen ill. She couldn’t stop vomiting. Spaun ran run to CVS to get medication while his wife tended to his daughter. He described the sleepless night as “chaos.”

The next day, he outplayed the field and won the championship.

If Spaun had been relying on a wearable, his readiness score would have been crap. The device would have told him he needed more sleep, that he wasn’t primed to perform his best. Just imagine if he would have let it get in his head, or worse, listened to it.

For all that we know about human performance, it is still wildly mysterious. A blackbox algorithm cannot predict how you’ll perform. If you think you must have full readiness to perform at your best, then you will leave so many of your best days on the table. It is a fragility mindset that creates a self-fulfilling prophecy.

When my son was between the ages of zero and two, he was a terrible sleeper. We were up all the time. Making it to 3 A.M. without multiple intermissions was a rarity. Did I feel great during that stretch? Of course not. But I wrote one of my best books (The Practice of Groundedness) anyways. It required a lot of coffee. The work was effortful. There wasn’t much flow. But it got done, and got done well. If I would have been paying attention to a wearable it would have diminished my confidence and, subsequently, my performance.

Health and Performance Anxiety

A big difference between the optimization influencer types and actual elite performers is that the former are obsessed with wearables, data, and numbers, whereas the latter have learned to control what they can control, and not freak out about the rest.

I think much of it comes down to anxiety. Life is inherently uncertain. You can do everything to practice and prepare, and then stuff happens. And even when everything goes smoothly, it’s still no guarantee that you’ll perform your best. The greats learn to accept this uncertainty, show up, and give what they’ve got to give on the day. That’s a far cry from working yourself up over an arbitrary readiness score, which is an illusion to begin with.

My favorite scene in the Beatles documentary Get Back begins with the band stumbling into a recording session having hardly any energy. Paul McCartney is visibly frustrated, noting that “Lennon’s late again.” George Harrison is yawning and struggling to keep his eyes open. Ringo Starr appears exhausted and zoned out. Nobody wants to be in the studio. Nevertheless, McCartney lazily begins strumming an A chord on his bass, gibbering ad-lib lyrics as he goes. Eventually he lands on the words “get back.” Those two words have an immediate effect on Harrison and Starr, who return to life. Lennon finally enters the studio, grabs his guitar, and joins in. Herein lies the genesis of one of the most iconic songs ever written.

Imagine if the Beatles had decided not to start that day. Or if McCartney had referenced a wearable that, based on a black-box algorithm, told him in order to “optimize” his performance, he would need to stay in bed and rest. Or if the band had told themselves, Today just isn’t the day, and created a self-fulfilling prophecy around that thought. We’d be without one of the most iconic songs ever written.

Don’t Outsource Your Ability to Show up to a Device

Wearables can be effective for simple measurements that drive behavior change, such as how many steps you take in a given day, or a heart-rate monitor or power meter for exercise. But it’s worth thinking twice before paying attention to the more complex scores they provide. At that point, you shift from potentially useful data to witchcraft—and instead of helping yourself perform better, you end up getting in your own way.

Instead of thinking about a readiness score, try thinking: let me show up, get started, and give myself a chance. Who knows what will happen, and I can always shut it down if need be.

Peak performance and greatness are not about optimizing a score on a screen. They are about showing up consistently over a long period of time, through all the ups and downs and obstacles in life, and giving what you’ve got to give. Don’t let a wrist-worn device or ring tell you otherwise. Don’t outsource your sense of readiness to an algorithm. Don’t optimize your way to fragility. Performance is complex and hard to predict, and you are more durable than you think.