What are we optimising for

August 3, 2026 Leave a comment

There is a peculiar anxiety that defines modern adulthood, which is the fear that somewhere, someone your age is living life better than you. They wake up at 5 AM to journal, meditate, go for a run or walk, consume protein-heavy breakfasts with ingredients you cannot even pronounce, maintain diversified investment portfolios, post thoughtful LinkedIn reflections about leadership, practice intermittent fasting, listen to podcasts at double speed, and somehow still find time to post photos captioned ‘grateful for the journey.’ Meanwhile, you are eating leftover biryani at 11 PM, ignoring unread emails, and wondering whether watching three back-to-back episodes of a series on OTT counts as self-care or surrender. Welcome to the age of optimisation, where every aspect of human life is treated as a system waiting to be upgraded.

Every time I am on my Instagram, it is showing me posts and reels on how to work harder, sleep better, network smarter, manage my relationships more efficiently, eat cleaner, learn faster, age slower, retire earlier and build passive income streams. I keep receiving spam on how to track my calories, my mood, my steps, my productivity, and my screen time (usually through apps that require even more screen time!). Human beings have never had more tools to improve their lives, yet many seem increasingly unsure about what all this relentless optimisation is actually meant to achieve. That question matters because optimisation itself is morally neutral. One can optimise for wealth, prestige, freedom, family, creativity, impact, or simply survival. The real danger begins when people optimise by default, without consciously deciding what destination they are trying to reach.

For much of human history, life paths were shaped by geography, class, castes, family structures, religion, and social expectations. A farmer’s son often became a farmer, and family businesses were inherited. Communities dictated rhythms of marriage, work, and social responsibility. These systems could be deeply restrictive, but they also answered major life questions before individuals had to confront them. Modern life replaced those rigid structures with unprecedented freedom, but that freedom has created its own exhaustion. Today, individuals can theoretically become anything, from a founder, consultant, artist, social development specialist, creator, digital nomad, climate entrepreneur, venture capitalist, to a wellness coach, or any number of job titles that appear to have been invented inside a coworking space brainstorming session. But when every path appears open, every decision begins to feel like closing off another possibility.

This conundrum is particularly visible in India, where rapid economic transformation has dramatically expanded aspiration. In cities such as Bengaluru, Mumbai, and Gurugram, millions of first-generation professionals are participating in one of the largest upward mobility experiments in modern history. Many are children of doctors, teachers, farmers, small business owners, or government employees whose sacrifices created opportunities their children could only dream of. Their children now work in multinational firms, startups, for-purpose organisations, consulting companies, and global technology firms. The opportunities are real, but so is the pressure. Success often carries responsibilities beyond personal fulfilment, as it repays family debt, funds siblings’ education, supports parents, and becomes a symbol of collective social mobility. Ambition, therefore, becomes deeply emotional because it often carries the weight of inherited dreams.

This phenomenon is hardly unique to the geographic boundaries of India. Similar pressures shape immigrant families in the United States, first-generation professionals in Kenya, and upwardly mobile households across Southeast Asia and Latin America. However, India’s sheer population scale makes this phenomenon particularly visible. At the same time, global workplace culture has become remarkably effective at turning ambition into identity. Work is no longer simply something people do, but it is increasingly defining who they are. At networking events (and even social ones, as I am experiencing), the first question is almost always ‘What do you do?’ Rarely does anyone ask what brings someone joy, what relationships they value most, or whether they feel at peace with their lives.

Modern workplaces reward speed, availability, and measurable outcomes. There is always another promotion cycle, another certification, another startup opportunity, another productivity framework, and another way to feel perpetually behind. Entire industries now thrive by convincing people they are one habit away from becoming better versions of themselves. Even leisure has been absorbed into ambition, as travel becomes networking with other travellers you meet at the airports, next seat, at breakfast tables, sunset viewing, and in the swimming pools, reading becomes content consumption, exercise becomes data analytics on your smartphone, hobbies become monetisable side hustles, and rest becomes recovery for more work. Recently, a friend joked that he can no longer enjoy a morning run unless his smartwatch confirms he enjoyed it efficiently, which may be one of the most accurate summaries of modern life.

Technology has intensified this culture by expanding the scale of comparison. Earlier generations compared themselves to neighbours, relatives, or colleagues. Today, individuals compare themselves with startup founders in San Francisco, creators in Seoul, bankers in London, and influencers in Dubai before breakfast. Social media ensures that there is always someone younger, wealthier, fitter, more accomplished, and apparently more fulfilled. What social media rarely reveals are burnout, loneliness, failed ventures, strained marriages, anxiety medication, or the existential doubts that often accompany visible success.

One of the strangest contradictions of elite ambition is that many people spend decades optimising for lifestyles they barely have time to enjoy. Prestigious jobs leave little room for family, and dream vacations are interrupted by work calls. This is not an argument against ambition itself, as ambition can be deeply meaningful. It can lift families out of poverty, create institutions, solve major problems, produce art, and expand human progress. The problem is unconscious ambition. If someone wants to optimise for income, there is nothing inherently wrong with that. If someone prioritises freedom, impact, family, or creativity, those are equally valid choices. The important thing is understanding which game one is playing. Too many people are climbing ladders handed to them by parents, peers, employers, or algorithms without ever asking whether they wanted to climb those ladders in the first place.

The absurdities of optimisation culture become visible in everyday life. People optimise their routines while neglecting friendships, chase promotions while postponing health, expand professional networks while losing touch with siblings, or save aggressively for retirement while forgetting how to enjoy their lives in the present. Many work relentlessly for future freedom as though the future is guaranteed, but it is not, as layoffs and illness happen,  political systems become unstable, and entire industries disappear. The future remains far less controllable than optimisation culture would like people to believe.

That uncertainty can feel frightening, but it can also be liberating. If life is fundamentally unpredictable, perhaps the goal should not be maximum efficiency. Perhaps the goal should be building a life that feels coherent, a life where work matters but does not consume identity, where ambition exists without becoming an addiction, and where success includes relationships, health, curiosity, and moments of stillness. It may mean creating a calendar that reflects actual values rather than external expectations.Ultimately, every individual must confront the most important question for themselves: ‘What is all this effort for?’ Not what impresses employers, relatives, social media followers, or algorithms, but what genuinely matters on a personal level. For some, the answer may be financial security. For others, it may be family, entrepreneurship, public service, writing, travel, or a quieter life built around enough rather than endless accumulation. The greatest tragedy of modern life may not be failure, but may be becoming extraordinarily efficient at pursuing goals that were never truly your own.

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Why everyone says, I am fine 

July 6, 2026 Leave a comment

There is a performance that many people have mastered in modern life, of looking completely fine while quietly falling apart. It has become one of the most refined social skills of our time. You show up to work on time, reply to emails with professional warmth, attend weddings with coordinated outfits, post cheerful holiday photos, laugh at dinner parties, and reassure everyone that ‘all is well’ while your internal monologue resembles an emergency board meeting. Rent is rising, parents are ageing, careers feel uncertain, relationships are complicated, your back hurts for reasons your doctor politely describes as stress related, and you have not felt truly rested since sometime before the pandemic. Yet when someone asks how you are doing, the answer remains remarkably consistent, ‘Good, good. Just busy.’

Across the world, people are becoming increasingly fluent in this language of polished distress. Social media has trained us to curate competence, while professional culture rewards composure, and families often value stability over vulnerability. Entire societies function because millions of people continue showing up despite private exhaustion. But this performance feels particularly pronounced among Indians who are living both within India and across the global diaspora, where social expectations are often complex, relentless, and efficient at producing outward success alongside inward strain.

The Indian social script remains deeply achievement-oriented. From childhood, most of us are introduced to a familiar sequence of expectations that feels both culturally specific and globally recognisable, which includes performing well in school, attending a branded university/college, entering a respectable profession, earning well, marrying appropriately, buying property, caring for parents, raising successful children, and maintaining family honour while appearing effortlessly grateful for the opportunity. There are, of course, regional, class, and generational variations, but the broad architecture remains remarkably durable. Even among progressive urban families, conventional expectations often survive in modern packaging. Instead of explicit pressure to become a doctor or engineer, there may be subtle comparisons with cousins working at Google, Amazon, or investment firms in London. Marriage pressure may sound softer, but family Whatsapp groups can still function as passive-aggressive reminder systems.

The emotional burden becomes even more complicated because these expectations are rarely framed as pressure, as they are often presented as love, sacrifice, duty, and practical wisdom. Parents who invested heavily in their children’s education may genuinely believe they are guiding them toward security. Extended families may see their involvement as care. Communities may celebrate conformity because it appears stable. But good intentions do not eliminate psychological consequences. Many young professionals in Mumbai, Bengaluru, Delhi NCR, and Hyderabad are managing demanding careers while quietly navigating family expectations around marriage, caregiving responsibilities, home ownership, and financial support. They are often simultaneously trying to be globally competitive professionals and culturally responsible children. It is a difficult balancing act, made harder by the fact that neither side fully acknowledges the strain.

For Indians living overseas, the pressures often become even more complex. The immigrant success story remains one of the most celebrated narratives in many diaspora communities. The child of immigrants in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, or Australia may be expected to succeed professionally in highly competitive societies while also preserving cultural identity, supporting family back home, and remaining deeply connected to traditions that often become more rigid in migration. This produces a strange phenomenon where individuals feel pressure to excel in two worlds while fully belonging to neither. You are expected to understand tax laws in Seattle, maintain emotional fluency in Bihari family politics, and explain to relatives why you are still unmarried at 32 despite having what appears, on paper, to be an excellent and successful life!

Weddings deserve special mention as global showcases of curated wellbeing. Few events demonstrate collective emotional theatre quite like the fat Indian weddings. Families spend enormous amounts of money celebrating joy while quietly navigating interpersonal tensions, financial stress, unresolved conflicts, and logistical chaos. Guests arrive dressed magnificently, smiling for photographs that suggest a flawless communal celebration. Beneath the choreography, there may be sibling rivalries, debt, parental anxieties, and relatives evaluating everything from the food menu to life decisions. And though the wedding album looks immaculate, the emotional spreadsheet rarely does.

Professionally, employees are expected to remain productive through layoffs, economic uncertainty, technological disruption, and burnout. In India’s startup hubs and global financial centres alike, people casually describe 80-hour workweeks as ambition while quietly experiencing anxiety, insomnia, and emotional depletion. The language of hustle culture has simply provided respectable branding for exhaustion. Saying ‘I am slammed’ has become shorthand for importance. Saying ‘I am overwhelmed’ remains harder.

Social media has amplified all of this by turning life into a continuous public relations exercise. Platforms reward milestones like promotions, vacations, engagements, anniversaries, fitness transformations, children’s achievements, and entrepreneurial announcements. They are less enthusiastic about ambiguity, grief, stagnation, infertility struggles, career confusion, loneliness, or ordinary dissatisfaction. The result is a digital ecosystem where everyone appears to be thriving. You scroll through photographs of destination weddings in Udaipur, startup exits in San Francisco, babies in matching outfits, and beachfront holidays in Bali while sitting with your own uncertainty and wondering whether everyone else has somehow figured out adulthood.

Many people who appear successful are privately negotiating debt, loneliness, marital strain, workplace anxiety, fertility struggles, caregiving responsibilities, mental health challenges, or the exhausting task of meeting expectations they never consciously chose. The colleague who seems composed may be supporting parents through medical crises. The cousin posting anniversary photos may be managing deep relationship problems. The entrepreneur celebrating funding rounds may be unable to sleep. The family friend who constantly asks why you are not married may have spent years trapped in an unhappy marriage themselves. Human beings are remarkably skilled at editing their visible narratives.

Indian society’s combination of collectivist expectations, rapid economic change, intergenerational obligations, and intense social comparison creates a particularly sophisticated ecosystem of invisible pressure. What makes this dynamic especially difficult is that many people feel guilty for acknowledging it. After all, they may have stable jobs, supportive families, educational privilege, or material comfort relative to previous generations. Gratitude becomes weaponised against honest emotional reflection. ‘What do you have to complain about?’ remains one of the most efficient ways to shut down vulnerability in many households. 

The irony is that a genuine connection often begins the moment someone drops the performance. When one friend admits they are burnt out, another confesses they are anxious. When someone speaks honestly about marriage pressure, career confusion, depression, caregiving exhaustion, or loneliness, others often respond with relief rather than judgment. The collective illusion begins to weaken. Perhaps the challenge of modern adulthood is not learning how to appear fine. Most people have already mastered that skill. The real challenge is building lives, friendships, workplaces, and families where ‘I’m not okay right now’ does not feel like a social failure.Behind many polished LinkedIn profiles, family portraits, wedding photographs, and cheerful Whatsapp updates lies the same truth that everyone looks fine because that is what society often rewards. But many are carrying far more than they show, and sometimes the most radical act of honesty is answering ‘How are you?’ with something closer to the truth.

If this article made you pause, reflect, or quietly say, ‘this feels familiar,’ you are not alone. Share it with someone who always says, ‘I am fine,’ and maybe start the kind of conversation we all need more of. Subscribe to my blog for one reflective article every week in your mailbox. It’s free!

(The two images used are generated using AI)

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