Be Better...Or Else

Welcome to the church of self-improvement.

The rituals? Cold plunges, 5am alarms, and meal-prepped quinoa. The sacred texts? Substacks, productivity podcasts, and 700-page biographies of billionaires. The doctrine?

Be better. Always.

Don’t question the system, just optimise your way through it. There's a hack for sleep, a supplement to help you focus (there's 8 actually) and if you can’t find meaning, then just build a second brain.

We’ve turned productivity into morality. Growth into gospel. The modern sermon doesn’t come from a pulpit, it comes from a YouTube channel telling you how to 10x your output and crush your goals before sunrise.

And if none of this works? That’s on you. You weren’t disciplined enough. You didn’t want it badly enough. You sinned against the grind.

But what if it's the religion that's the problem?

What if constant self-optimisation isn’t the way out of this mess?

The Rise of the Optimised Self

The root cause of all this nonsense is economic. And it's by design. We're playing a game, but we don't know why.

What used to be collective (education, healthcare, community) has been offloaded onto the individual. Can’t afford therapy? Try mindfulness. Can’t land a job? Learn to code. Feeling burnt out? Wake up earlier.

The message is simple: if you’re struggling (and isn't everyone?), it’s your fault. You just haven’t optimised enough.

Self-improvement has become a form of economic survival. In a world of shrinking safety nets and widening inequality, standing still feels like falling behind.

So we keep running, just to stay in the race.

When Progress Becomes Performance

The problem isn’t wanting to grow. Growth is great. I’m all for reading, learning, reflecting, working out. I do all of it.

But there’s a difference between growth and performance.

When improvement becomes another form of competition, we start to lose sight of why we're improving in the first place. You’re not going to self-discipline your way to meaning. You can’t “10x” your way into connection.

There’s also a flattening of identity that happens.

We stop being people, and start becoming brands. Polished. Productive. Marketable. Everything we do becomes content. Every hour must be justified. Even rest must be explained as a tool to increase future output.

We don’t just self-improve, we self-economise.

The Hidden Cost of Hyper-Self-Improvement

All of this has a cost. To us, our relationships, and our communities.

If everyone’s focused on their own edge, who’s watching out for the people around them? What's happened to solidarity, to community and collective problem-solving?

There’s a reason systemic issues stay systemic.

It’s hard to organise when everyone’s busy journaling, biohacking, and side hustling. We’re too busy managing ourselves to ask the bigger questions: Why is life so precarious in the first place? Who benefits when we’re too tired to think?

It’s no coincidence that this hyper-individual focus keeps us docile. Anxious, overextended individuals don’t disrupt the system. They self-regulate. They try harder. They blame themselves.

That’s not empowerment. That’s control.

So What’s the Alternative?

None of this means we shouldn’t try to grow. But maybe we should rethink what we’re growing for.

Improvement for the sake of service. Growth for the sake of generosity. Knowledge that makes us more connected, not more competitive.

What would self-improvement look like if it weren’t just about individual success? What if it helped us become better citizens, not just better workers? Better neighbours, not just better earners?

The Real Work

We don’t need more hacks or habits. We need more purpose. More connection. More systems that support people before they break.

We need to remember that we’re more than economic units.

And maybe, just maybe, we need to stop asking, How can I get ahead? and start asking:

What kind of world do I want to live in?

Takeaways for the Week Ahead

Audit your why: The next time you sign up for a course, a routine, or a new app, ask yourself: is this about growth or performance?

Share the load: Improvement doesn’t have to be solo. Support someone else’s learning. Ask for help. Do something in a team.

Reclaim your time: You don’t need to earn rest. Or joy. Or curiosity. You’re allowed to exist without optimising every minute.

Want to get better? Maybe start with questioning the idea that you need to be better.

You might already be enough.

Until next time,

Jon "High Priest of Online Courses" Kaye

Choosing to live more deliberately

P.S.

My show next week on Do Radio is with Ben Gotting. Former professional sportsman. We talk about what happens when the dream ends and there's still so much life to live. You can listen here.