When Did Looking After Ourselves Become So Complicated?

I was making a coffee recently and it struck me how complicated we’ve managed to make something incredibly simple.

Coffee isn’t just coffee anymore.

Add collagen for your skin. Protein for your muscles. Mushrooms for your brain. MCT oil for energy. Track it on your wearable. Then perhaps take another supplement to counteract the caffeine.

I’m exaggerating slightly.

But only slightly.

We’ve become obsessed with optimisation.

I’m fascinated by health and performance, so I’m probably as guilty of this as anyone.

There’s some incredible research happening around nutrition, exercise, sleep, longevity and the brain.

The problem is that looking after ourselves can start to feel like another job.

Morning routine.

Supplements.

Steps.

Protein.

Sleep score.

HRV.

Meditation streak.

Recovery score.

And somewhere amongst all this measurement, we can lose sight of something fairly obvious:

Humans already know quite a lot about what makes us feel good.

Sleep properly.

Move your body.

Spend time outside.

Eat reasonably well.

Have people around you that you care about.

Give your brain a break occasionally.

None of that is particularly exciting.

And perhaps that’s the problem.

We like the idea of a shortcut.

It’s much easier to take something than change something.

I say that as someone who owns a supplement company.

I still believe functional mushrooms can have a useful role. Otherwise I wouldn’t continue making them.

But I’ve changed how I think about their place in my life.

I don’t want a cupboard containing 15 different products.

I want the things I take to earn their place.

That’s one of the reasons we reduced Flow Brew to one product containing three functional mushrooms rather than continuing to build an increasingly large range.

Less, but better.

And I’m starting to apply the same thinking beyond supplements.

Perhaps wellbeing doesn’t need to be another thing we optimise.

Meditation doesn’t need to be 30 minutes.

A walk doesn’t need to count towards something.

Exercise doesn’t always need to produce a personal best.

Dinner with friends doesn’t need to be healthy.

Sometimes doing absolutely nothing is probably quite useful too.

The more I explore this subject, the more interested I become in the difference between optimising our lives and actually experiencing them.

Technology is going to make optimisation easier than ever.

AI will tell us what to eat.

Wearables will tell us when to sleep.

Apps will tell us how stressed we are.

Some of that will be incredibly useful.

But I don’t want an algorithm to become better at understanding how I feel than I am.

So I’m trying something simpler.

Use technology when it’s useful.

Take the things I genuinely believe support me.

Meditate.

Get outside.

Move.

Spend time with good people.

And occasionally stop measuring any of it.

Maybe looking after ourselves was never supposed to be quite as complicated as we’ve made it.