Autonomymaxxing: The Morality of Self-Optimization

This piece was adapted from an essay originally written for a public policy course, Policy Choice as Value Conflict.

“Day 1 of Becoming a Fiber Maxxer,” “Hair styling to visually reduce facial asymmetries,” and a “Day in the life” video that starts with a 4 a.m. wake-up, 10-mile run, and ice bath: these are just three of the reels that greeted me when I opened Instagram this morning (significantly later than 4 a.m.). In recent years, a new ethos has emerged—self-optimization. As these examples illustrate, efforts to self-optimize can and have been taken to somewhat cartoonish lengths. But even if you haven’t partaken in bone-smashing (hammering your bones to make your features more defined) or don’t self-identify as a “fiber-maxxer,” chances are that self-optimization has reached you in other ways. Maybe you make food decisions based on protein content, or you aim for the magic number of 10,000 steps a day. Self-optimization is difficult to avoid in the modern era, especially with opportunistic companies rolling out an ever-expanding offering of products (Fitbits, habit tracking journals, or, perhaps the pinnacle of wellness: the sleep-, fitness-, and stress-tracking Oura Ring) designed to provide insight into virtually every metric of your health. Forms of self-optimizing influences vary, but they all share one thing in common: an underlying message that the current “you” is in some way inadequate. Fortunately, however, these messages tend to be conveniently paired with the exact, quantifiable solutions to your shortcomings.

Scrolling through these kinds of videos on social media does not typically make me feel good about myself, but I struggle to condemn the entire genre as unhelpful. After all, the goals of self-optimization are, ostensibly, about improving an individual’s health or well-being. How can these objectively admirable ends be reconciled with the often obsessive ways they manifest? This question leads me to consider the moral status of self-optimization more generally. Can we characterize self-optimization as either morally “good” or morally “bad”? This is the question that this essay seeks to clarify.