Video summary
The video addresses the rising "anti-optimization" trend, where personal development is increasingly criticized as a source of misery rather than growth. The speaker observes that while improving one's life was once an unspoken virtue, discussing these efforts now often leads to social backlash and labels people as insufferable. This shift has given rise to concepts like "grind slop," which argues that self-improvement culture has lost its way or was nonsense all along. The speaker acknowledges the validity of this criticism regarding over-optimization but warns against discarding personal development entirely, noting that such a reaction often stems from anxiety and burnout rather than genuine laziness.
Drawing from his own history as an "adult infant" who transformed himself through intense discipline after years of partying, the author explains why he understands both extremes of this debate. He admits to having gone through a grueling five-year period of rigorous optimization that looked fragile or ritualistic to outsiders but was necessary for him to overcome past mistakes and build self-respect. However, he recognizes when advice becomes toxic; telling someone who is already grinding themselves into the dirt to "work harder" acts as poison, whereas telling an anxious perfectionist to be kind can feel like a lifeline. The core issue highlighted is that guidance does not land evenly on everyone, often exacerbating problems for those most in need of it while failing to help others.
Ultimately, the speaker concludes that there is no universal solution or miracle cure for the complexities of being human, as obsession drives individuals toward whatever path offers the least resistance, whether that be substance abuse or extreme self-discipline. Instead of seeking a single set of instructions, he encourages viewers to treat personal growth resources like a vast library where they can wander freely, absorbing ideas and keeping only what resonates with them while discarding the rest. The video ends on an empathetic note, urging people not to beat themselves up for trying to improve but to be gentle with their own efforts in navigating this challenging landscape of self-discovery.
Read the full video transcript
Optimization.
>> Optimization is stealing our lives.
>> I had a couple of glasses of wine. It
ruined three days of my life.
>> This is how you level up at the same
time. Go to bed. I don't care when you
go to bed.
>> Hyper optimization has become a disease.
[music]
>> The internet has a way of taking a good
idea and squeezing every ounce of nuance
out of it, turning into something
ridiculous. And I think that that's
happened again. It's always been an
unspoken rule that improving your life
was fine as long as you don't talk about
it. But the moment that you mention it
to anyone, you become insufferable. Now
it appears this trend of anti-personal
development is going viral. You've
probably seen videos and articles with
headlines like how personal development
ruined my happiness, why I quit
optimization, the self-improvement trap.
It's called grind slop and it's the idea
that personal development has somewhere
along the line lost the plot or in some
cases that it was always nonsense to
begin with. If you follow me for a
while, you'll know that this isn't some
abstract thing for me. I have certainly
contributed to this industry and I think
that there are legitimate criticisms
against overoptimization and I've been
talking about the importance of just
chilling the [ __ ] out and the perils of
grind slop for years now.
Self-development went from exercising a
few times a week and eating clean to
HRV, cold plunges, red light therapy,
expensive supplements, and V2 max. It
became a second full-time job on top of
the side hustle that you're also
supposed to be doing. Look, I'm no saint
for either religion. I'm a reformed
degenerate turned into a reformed
optimizer. It's the exact same amount of
sweating just with a slightly smaller
risk of accidentally taking fentinyl. I
was an adult infant for a long time and
I needed to sort myself out, right?
There's nothing more shameful than
someone still playing the game that you
do when you're 20, when you're 40. And
that is the industry that I came from.
And I didn't want that. I had to pay my
dues, right? I spent a long time having
a very elaborate morning routine. I
would get up and go for a walk, get
sunlight in my eyes. I would drink salt
and water before it was cool. I would
meditate and journal and do breath work
and yoga and make sure my food was
prepped and I would read. All of this
was me basically paying penance for
being such an idiot for a long time.
Professional party boy, DJ, model, Love
Island, Take Me Out. I was all of the
red flags you don't want in your future
son-in-law. And I needed to recoup that
debt. I'd got to party a lot and run
some really cool events in Eithther and
Marba and Newcastle and Manchester and
Scotland. And then at some point I
needed to grow up and I could have grown
up slowly over a very long period of
time or I could have paid this debt to
the version of me that would have done a
bit of self-improving for 10 years
between the age of 18 and 28. I didn't I
decided to do the equivalent of a Navy
Seal hell week that lasted for about 5
years from the age of 28. And that meant
that I had to optimize a lot. I needed
to pay this penance. And in retrospect,
as cringey as it is to see me talk about
this incredibly elaborate morning
routine, I don't regret any of it
because it transformed me from being
somebody that I wasn't particularly
proud of into someone that I was. It's a
period. It's a period that you go
through. It's part of the lonely
chapter. It's part of going from being a
person who you don't like to becoming
someone closer to the one that you do.
And I think it's easier to do if you do
it intensely. I think everybody needs to
go through a period like this where they
just focus on making themselves better.
And unfortunately, that's going to
require some isolation and some
restriction. From the outside, that can
look a lot like fragility. You're
basically doing this weird ritual or
rain dance that doesn't add anything to
your life. This feels unnecessarily
complex. It's fragile because if you
don't do it, then you're going to feel
worse. Can there be a type of personal
development that takes it too far?
1,000%. But I don't think we should be
too quick to judge people who are doing
this to try and pull themselves out of a
trench that you didn't see them get
into. You know, when I hear anti-g grind
slop critics say that having a morning
routine is gross, it makes me think my
morning routine used to be trying to
explain to the taxi driver that that
stain on the seat was already there when
I got in. So, I'll happily take my
second morning routine over my first
one. But this comes back to the point.
The edgiest thing that I did for a long
time was go to bed early. And somehow
that offended people more than anything
I did on a reality TV show where the
goal was literally to bang everyone. The
reason I think I can talk on this is
that I have been at the extreme of both
of these ends, right? I've partied more,
drank more, and paid less attention to
my personal development than almost
everybody. And I've been more obsessive
than almost everybody as well. I've seen
both sides of this barbell. And I get
it. If you had spent years or decades on
the self-optimization train only to find
yourself burned out and miserable, or
your friend has lost his banter and you
can't bear to hang around with him
anymore, I feel for you. I really do. At
those moments where it feels like you've
turned your entire life into a
performance review and homework that
never ends, I get it. Now is the time
for you to open up and give yourself
some balance. But I don't think that we
should be judging people where you have
no idea how far along that journey
they're on. There's this idea that I've
been regurgitating over and over because
I think people need to hear it. The type
of person who consumes this sort of
content most often isn't the lazy guy on
the couch. It's the person who's already
anxious. They're already disciplined.
They're already lying awake at night
running an audit on their own day,
tallying up everything that they did
wrong. And when you pour more
optimization onto something like that,
it turns into burnout and sort of
curdles into this type of bitter
resentment. But at the same time, we are
living in by basically every measure the
most anxious, depressed, medicated,
loneliest, most confused time in human
history. And when anti-optimizers with
good intentions trying to make people
more robust, publish stories about how
self-development doesn't work, it can
leave a lot of people with the message
of just stop trying. Throw the whole
thing out, self-improvement is a scam.
Log off, touch grass, eat a pizza, hit a
bong, and just do whatever you want
because trying is pointless anyhow. And
look, I understand the appeal of that. I
really do. after years or decades of
permanently being told that you're not
doing enough. Someone coming along and
saying you're fine as you are is
probably what you need to hear. But you
don't fix the problem of I tried too
hard in the wrong direction by just
putting your head in a hole in the
complete opposite direction or in my
case a a khole. But here's my point.
Guidance never lands evenly. The people
who least need a particular piece of
advice are usually the ones most likely
to overdose on it, while the people who
desperately need it are somehow
completely immune. [ __ ] your feelings,
just work harder is rocket fuel for a
genuinely lazy person who probably does
need to have David Gogggins screaming in
his face. But it's poison for someone
who's already grinding themselves into
the dirt while they work too hard. Like,
be kinder to yourself is a lifeline for
a perfectionist who's already tearing
himself up. But it's a permission slip
for the man who already lets himself off
the hook every day. It's the same words.
It's the same advice, but it doesn't
have equal impact. And the one thing I
want to get across is that it's not
helpful to ask what works. A better
question is what works for me right now.
I'm never going to mock somebody for
trying to become better than they were.
The only thing that I'll ask of you is
to be a little bit careful about where
you go looking because the searching is
noble. It's a landscape that you're
searching in. That's an absolute
minefield. Which is why I got into this
industry. My goal was to talk to the
smartest people in the world and learn
as much as I possibly could. And even
then, I still have to remember that we
can't just go off everything we hear and
blindly follow advice. There is no
miracle cure that will dissolve the
fundamental difficulty and balance of
being human. Underneath it all, I think
it comes back to obsession. It's the
greatest gift and the worst curse at the
same time. If you're an obsessive
person, and I am deeply, it's wide into
me, then I can't actually help you with
that. It's not a setting that you can
dial down. If you [music]
are built to fixate, you are going to
fixate on something. And the question
is, what are you going to fixate on? An
obsessive mind that's left to its own
devices will always choose the path of
least resistance. Drinking, scrolling,
porn, rumination. My goal when I started
Modern Wisdom was, and always has been,
to understand myself and the world
around me, to offer you something
slightly more positive to aim your
intensity at. But please take this next
piece to heart. It was never meant to be
a set of instructions. I've always
thought of it more like a library, a big
sprawling, slightly chaotic autistic
library that you're free to wander
around in for as long as you like. You
don't walk into a library with the
mission of following every protocol from
every book. You don't need to agree with
every author. You're not supposed to.
All you have to do is absorb new ideas,
keep the ones that you like, and [music]
discard the rest. Whatever you decide to
do, please be gentle with that part of
you that's still [music] trying. Don't
beat it out of yourself. It takes
strength and courage to be searching at
all. That's it.