I read something on Substack recently that I haven't been able to stop thinking about: our grandmas didn't optimize everything. How have I never thought of that?!?

I'm someone who has fully bought into optimization — the Garmin, the protein goals, the sleep scores… I love checking things off and feeling like I’ve succeeded. And yet somewhere along the way, I started to wonder: are we actually living better, or are we just living from a distance?

I'm currently in what I can only describe as a whimsical, choose-your-own-adventure spring, and something shifted when I was in Guatemala and forgot my Garmin. I was just moving, eating, resting, and doing a sunrise hike that nearly ended me. And I felt more like myself than I had in a long time!

In this episode, I'm talking about:

• Why I think we're living in peak optimization culture and what it's costing us
• Learning to trust yourself again after outsourcing all your data to devices and apps
• Moving and eating intuitively — what that actually looks like for me right now
• Why not knowing my sleep score is genuinely making my days better
• You're allowed to take a break from optimizing

Let's Connect

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Continue the conversation with me on IG / Tiktok @thinkingaboutpodcast and @kirstimcnabney. Follow along on Substack for more conversations on the things that keep us thinking.

Links from the episode:

The Substack post about grandmas not optimizing

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