The optimized life won't save you.
(Note to self).
Check out the audio version of this post to hear me read this post out loud. Think of it as part essay + part off-the-cuff podcast. Usually, the audio is paywalled but I’ve left it free this week in case you’ve been wanting to check it out.
In today’s essay I talk about: My life-long obsession with morning routines and a perfected, highly optimized life, and how the internet makes us believe it’s all possible, even when it’s not.
For almost as long as I have been alive, I have worshiped at the altar of The Perfect Morning Routine. I have fantasized about it with almost religious-like dedication since childhood. I’m not sure if I ever truly believed it was fully achievable, but I do know that everything I saw told me it was.
I remember seeing Lizzie call Miranda and Gordo as she got ready for school on Lizzie McGuire and wondering why I, too, didn’t have fun, quippy little chats with my friends each morning.
Immediately, I pictured myself sitting at my desk, bright sunlight streaming through my bedroom window, a phone wedged between my shoulder and cheek as I checked myself out in a mirror, my free hands applying sixteen layers of Maybelline’s Dream Matte Mousse or swiping a Lancome Juicy Tube across my lips. Outside my door, the rest of my family would be sitting down at a table set with a mutli-course breakfast. Where’s Olivia? My parents would wonder out loud, peeking out from behind their newspapers. She’s going to miss the pancakes! But I was busy, of course. Phone calls. Juicy Tubes. No time for that. I’d just grab an apple on my way out, toss it in the air as I skipped out the door, the perfect accessory to my unique-yet-trendy outfit.
See also: This scene from Wish Upon A Star. I was so sure I could be Alexia Wheaton one day.
It didn’t seem relevant at the time that I got ready for school at 6:30 in the morning when it was usually dark outside or that I wore a uniform every day or that literally no one eats breakfast at the table together like they do in sitcoms because mornings are chaos and that I was, you know, a 5th grader as opposed to a character on Sex and The City. That was all unimportant. What was clear to me from the very start was that there were my mornings as they currently were, and that there was a version of them where they looked and felt better. They would make me look and feel better, too. I wanted that. Even at 10, I already knew I only had so many hours in a day, and I intended to optimize them.
When I was 22, I started my first full-time job as a fashion and beauty editor at a successful women’s website. Before I moved to Manhattan I pictured I would start every day at local coffee shop, despite the fact that I didn’t yet drink coffee every morning. I would wear perfect outfits and catch cabs and send emails from my phone in the backseat and say things like, “Wanna grab drinks after work?” I guess I did all of that, but even then, I remember thinking constantly that I wasn’t making the most of it in some deeply disappointing way. I started a Tumblr called 78th & Everything (I lived on 78th Street, so far east that I was essentially ankle-deep in the river), because if I was a 22-year-old living in New York City and working as a fashion and beauty editor and I wasn’t living some pristine hybrid Gossip Girl x The Devil Wears Prada life, then what the hell was I even doing? I maybe posted once before abandoning it and then I felt disappointed in that, too.
In that first job, I managed a small team of writers. I was expected to publish something like 20 articles a day. When a story worked, we squeezed every bit of juice from it. We capitalized on headline formats and word choices. If peppermint latte hair (I’m just assuming this was a thing in 2015) was trending, then we assigned stories about peppermint latte manicures or eye shadow or skin care. Anything could become a series, a format, or a path of success to follow until something clearly better came along. At a basic level, this is how any business model works. You capitalize and iterate on what hits. You optimize. Since that job, I’ve been a freelance writer, an influencer, a podcaster, and an author, and various combinations of all of the above. In every role, I’ve looked for ways to optimize, too, finessing both the layout of my hours and my days and the image of them in real time.
As a freelancer and influencer, I wrote and shared organically, following the impulses of my own ideas and sense of humor, but soon, I learned to gauge the reactions to my Instagram stories just as I had watched Chartbeat as an editor, a site where I could check how many people were viewing an article at any given moment. Every response I received to an essay or even a casual, off-the-cuff Instagram post became a data point on which to build the next version of myself. If I couldn’t seem to wrestle the perfect morning routine from myself, I thought, at least I could do this. I could recognize what worked and pursue more of it. This was simply a practical choice. I was optimizing my life and my work. My life was my work. My work was my life. What else was I supposed to do?
There was nothing wrong with this but slowly, I began to lose the ability to separate a creative impulse or idea from how I might package it. Even now, I think of sharing something and almost immediately, I run it into the future, imagining how a one-off post could become a series or a hobby can become a facet of my brand. What’s the version of it that would correspond with the most engagement? I do this without thinking. I think of myself as a brand or a headline or a piece of content without wanting to. This was certainly never the goal. But the internet has made it easy to see the upside of such a mindset. The internet, I would argue, actively encourages it.
I think of this phenomenon a lot lately as I wade through the daily barrage of “I quit Instagram for good and now only use Substack, and my life has changed” content on Notes. I’ve shared a lot about how cutting back on my own social media use has benefitted me over the course of the last year, and I agree that Substack is a medium that feels better. But it is also, very much so, still social media. I can personally say that there is virtually no chemical difference to the dopamine I feel when a post does well here, racking up likes and comments, compared to the same experience on Instagram. There is also no difference when a post bombs. And I know for a fact that there is a current of envy that snakes through this place, too, even though Notes would have us all believe it’s nothing but freehand journaling and eldest daughters and hot tea and Joan Didion (all good things, to be clear).
I am surely not the only one who compares the number of subscribers, likes, shares. Who sees the leader board posts. Who can’t ignore the small, specific circles of Substack It Girls as they emerge in fashion or books or cultural criticism. Yes, there are nuances to explore; Instagram is a more aesthetic platform, and a lack of likes or comments there inflames a whole slew of physical insecurities that a poorly-received essay can never quite emulate (though, in some ways, the latter can hurt more). A Substack post would probably never compel me to shop quite the way a swipe-up link does. But the basics of the emotional experience are exactly the same. There are pros, there are cons. There are highs, there are lows.
I am going to be the first to wholeheartedly congratulate anyone who quits Instagram entirely, now more than ever. And I love Substack because of how it has changed my career and the opportunity it provides to creatives, but my savior it is certainly not. If I am not careful, I fall into the very same patterns here that I can fall into on Instagram. I keep both the apps off my phone for that reason, and I still enjoy them both in their own ways, in moderation. Quitting one for the other while ignoring the overlap is not going to fill a void for approval or validation if that is what my brain seeks (and if often does!). It will not save me in the same way the perfect morning routine will not save me. But both things may get me a lot of likes and comments, if you share about them a certain way. The fact that someone makes the choice to abandon one app and immediately runs here to post about it is not a coincidence.
The ideas of quitting an app forever or finding the morning routine that changed your life are, in a word, compelling. Words like ‘never’ and ‘always’ and ‘forever’ and ‘changed my life’ are often found in headlines for the simple reason that people are much more likely to click on them when they’re packaged that way. This type of phrasing offers something concrete and uncomplicated, something far sexier than moderation or middle ground or nuance can ever offer. The Morning Routine That Changed My Life is more attractive than The Morning Routine That Works For Me Right Now But Maybe Won’t In A Couple Months and That’s OK. This Thing Will Save You is a whole lot more seductive than the alternative, which is that maybe nothing is going to save you if you think you are, first and foremost, a thing to be saved.
This is what the internet tells us: Black and white is more content-friendly than shades of gray. Hot takes perform better than middle-of-the-ground musings. Going all-in or all-out on something produces a much greater rush of adrenaline than half-measures. Your plus size online bestie bringing reality to Instagram communicates something much more clear than 32-year-old weirdo who likes a lot of different things and changes all the time and is just trying to figure it out.
Most of us are smart. I’m smart. I know rationally that The Perfect Morning Routine won’t save me. I’m sure I’ve always known that, deep down. And yet it really still feels possible sometimes, doesn’t it? We open our phones and computers and my god, there couldn’t be anything more clear than the fact that there are so many ways to push our lives into a better package. The options are right there. The assurance that it is possible is right there. Except all that proof is an illusion too, isn’t it?
What Lizzie McGuire and Carrie Bradshaw and Gossip Girl and Nara Smith and Ballerina Farm have in common is that none if it is real. And I don’t mean that in the sense that Nara and Hannah aren’t real women with, I’m sure, complex lives and fears and struggles that exist alongside their privilege, but that they also very clearly know what they risk when they live outside of the content framework that their audience has come to expect from them. So the nuance fades away, and their lives exist in our heads the same way Lizzie McGuire’s once existed in mine — without nuance, without shades of gray, without the inconsistency of a normal, human, unoptimized life. We might know that none of it is real, but the world worships and rewards it, anyway. And who among us wouldn’t want our lives to be applauded and envied like that?
I still, quite often, fantasize about The Perfect Morning Routine. I picture a smooth, seamless version of my life. The idea that it's so close is intoxicating. I see YouTube videos and Reels and Substack posts and I forget every rational thought I’ve ever had. It’s only an earlier alarm. It’s only a new skin care product. It’s only a better sports bra. A better supplement. Some green juice. Whatever. Every time, I am fooled into thinking that it’s so close, that the only thing standing between me and that optimized life is a little will power. I will work harder to shape my life, and I will be saved. Though now, I often also ask: From what? What, exactly, is the scary part about a less optimized life? Is it failure? Is it ugliness? The answer I come to most often these days is that the scary part is the shame. There is shame in not trying, trying, trying all the time. That’s our world. But I don’t want it to be mine.
I think part of me thought that spending less time on social media would save me, too. It would be The One Tiny Thing That Completely Changed My Life. It has changed my life positively. But am I really that different? Am I better? Am I fixed? Ha. It is still the same Olivia. Honestly, I just spend a lot more time with her now than I did before, when my brain always stuck in someone else’s life instead of my own. I can’t say that’s always easy, either. But here I am. Thirty-two-year-old (almost) weirdo just figuring it out. Some things are clear and some things are foggier, but I am wading through the muck. It’s a little like getting to know myself for the very first time. I spent so long wondering who I would be with The Perfect Morning Routine that I failed to ask myself who I was without it.
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this is so interesting bc i sometimes feel really inadequate (and, tbh, envious) when you describe your cozy mornings and lovely home on BOP. i have a pretty hectic schedule and live in a minimalistic rented flat and will often fantasize about the perfect slow morning in a beautiful home. reading this reminded me that everyone's life is their own, not something to be endlessly optimized and compared. thank you as always for your authenticity. 💖
I cackled at Dream Matte Mousse. That one lived deep in the archives of my brain.
My therapist calls my endless want to optimize as "should-ing myself" which is a little lol and helps me gut check when my brain tells me "I should wake up at 5am and workout for 45 minutes then shower and do my hair before getting my kid out the door and being at my desk for an 8am meeting." Like should I really? Who is this for? Do I want to do all that or is it, like you said, the shame in not doing the most at all times the real problem.