Have You Optimized Your Life But Still Don’t Feel Well?
You may be measuring performance when what you really care about is vitality. Here’s another way.
Introduction: A Slave to Productivity
I became a slave to my to-do list. Again.
Slowly, the structure I built began to choke the life out of me. What started off as a small pleasure of seeing items get finished became a form of discipline that left me drained and resentful. For many years, I’ve struggled to find the fine line between using structure and metrics to guide me and letting them narrow my vision.
It seemed that every time I pursued professional success, I ended up feeling dull and disconnected.
I know I’m not the only one.
Many people I know have their own proxies of health and success: heart rate variability (HRV), steps, RPM in the gym, marathon training progress, or the ever-popular to-do list.
Yet like me, many of them forget the larger why that motivated them to track something in the first place.
Whether the goal is to cultivate personal resilience or achieve a childhood dream, metrics often overtake meaning.
Recently I asked myself a question: What do I really want to track and grow in my life?
Four words came to mind: vitality, pleasure, joy, and success.
The Balance Experiment
One evening, I created a spreadsheet (humor me, I’m a former data scientist…) and added the following headings: date, vitality, pleasure, joy, success, notes. At the end of the day before winding down, I spend 5 minutes rating my day by gut feeling. Then in a stream of consciousness, I let impressions of the moments that mattered spill out in the notes section.
The notes include moments like:
“Ran into Sarah in the street and had a fun 30 min coffee date”
“Took a short walk at lunch and enjoyed the smoky air and blue skies”
“Great client session - the middle was intense, but we helped E with a huge block and she was relieved after”
“Got stuck and frustrated while writing and shifted focus for 30 min to music. Then felt so much clearer.”
“New tango shoes arrived and they’re gorgeous!!
After letting the day flood through my body again and out through my hands, I close my laptop and let it all go.
A few days ago, I realized I had enough weeks of data to look for trends. I began combing through the days with high ratings in each category looking for patterns. Here’s what stood out:
My highest joy days weren’t extravagant or expensive. They were days when I got clarity and alignment on projects or got a creative idea speaking with a friend.
My highest pleasure days didn’t require massages; they were the days when I took a few minutes at a time to indulge my senses in blue skies, red skirts, and slow-cooked meals at home.
My highest vitality days largely depended on how well I prepared for sleep the night before, whether I got morning sunlight, and how much pleasure and joy I let myself feel.
My highest success days were the ones where I went out of my comfort zone in coaching and songwriting. They were the days when I followed my values.
The Shift from Doing to Being
At 32, I know myself pretty well.
I know the habits that make me feel good, recognize when I’m out of balance, and am very familiar with my own bullshit.
That’s why I was surprised when my experiment waved something unexpected in my face:
The simplest things in life make a profound difference to my wellbeing.
The sandalwood incense I bought for 6 euro transformed my mood and turned my apartment into a luxury spa. Seeing a friend for coffee gave me a surge of energy that lasted all day. Ten minutes spent enjoying smoky air and blue skies made me smile for the next few hours.
I was also surprised to discover what really triggered my sense of joy: the experience of developing my clarity and craftsmanship. Finding the right lyrics to finish a song or the perfect chord for a progression gave me a shot of joy better than any vacation or gift. And so did analyzing a client’s intake forms and seeing their pattern with clarity.
I also learned the truth of the phrase, “that which is measured, improves.” As I started rating each area of my life, the average started to improve gradually over weeks, before I did any analysis.
The most radical part wasn’t the spreadsheet though: It was shifting my focus from doing to being.
For the first time I considered my own energy and satisfaction with life to be as important as success.
And the surprising thing? They all feed each other. The more joy and pleasure I feel, the more vitality, and the clearer my sense of success.
For the longest time, I’d unconsciously treated my life like a pie: more success means less of everything else. Now I see my life less like a pie and more like a pinwheel.
When one area catches wind - joy, pleasure, vitality - the whole thing begins to spin.
Doing your best yet still feeling blocked?
If you’re doing all the right things and still not feeling fully alive, something deeper is asking for your attention. I created the Mind-Body Breakthrough Quiz as a simple way to uncover where your energy is constricted - in your body, beliefs, or nervous system - and what your next step might be. You can take it here.
