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- Ungamify your life
My happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance, and in inverse proportion to my expectations.
— Michael J. Fox
A few weeks ago, I wrote about tracking my sleep for two years before stopping for two main reasons: (1) I didn’t learn anything new, and (2) the sleep tracker shaped how I felt—meaning I believed I had slept poorly because the app said so, not because I actually felt bad.
Anyone should be free to track what they want, but many people, especially in high-income countries, have become data-obsessed. I’m guilty of it myself—first in my notebooks, meticulously tracking habits, then in Notion, where endless dashboards monitored every aspect of my life.
Our apps have caught on, and even our hobbies aren’t safe. All in the name of “gamification.”
When was the last time you went for a run / exercised without Strava or a smartwatch?
Ever counted how many books you read in a month?
Feel proud seeing you’re in the top 0.1% of Kendrick’s listeners on Spotify Wrapped?
Disappointed if you don’t hit your 10k daily steps?
Heck, even my meditation app tracks my streaks and total minutes meditated. It often feels like we do these activities more to watch the numbers go up than for the joy or fulfillment they bring.
In her piece Here's What the Fight For Your Attention Really Looks Like, Julia Alexander argues that gamification turns leisure into competition:
We no longer know how to sit at peace with time. That time must be spent on beating a goal, and when we check social media in an attempt to slow down our brains for a second, we are met with others posting about their own goals, making us feel that overwhelming sense of guilt and return to whatever act of our life we are in the midst of gamifying.
We’re incentivized to chase quantity over quality, convincing ourselves it’s for our own good. In reality, leisure becomes another form of work, leaving us more burned out. And tech companies aren’t helping—they infuse gamification into every product they make.
In De-Atomization is the Secret to Happiness, Nat Eliason explains how we “atomize” activities, meaning we reduce rich, multifaceted experiences to their single most obvious element.
Take biking, for example:
First, biking was something you did outside, often with friends. There was scenery, socialization, exploration, sunlight, and exercise. Then the exercise element was captured in stationary bikes, placed in a gym or a spin class, stripping away most of the richness. You still got exercise and some socialization, but no scenery, exploration, or fresh air. Then came Peloton. No socialization. No scenery. No exploration. No sunlight. Just exercise—and sure, Emma is cute, but that’s it. The richness of biking is gone.
I think Julia’s & Nat’s points are deeply intertwined: our obsession with stats drives us to optimize our activities, and the easiest way to optimize is to strip away all the seemingly non-essential elements.
But this atomization makes it harder to meet our basic needs—exercise, nature, relationships—because an activity that once satisfied them all now only serves a single purpose. No wonder loneliness is on the rise.
Yes, atomized activities are more convenient. They take less time and effort. But paradoxically, they steal more time because you now have to schedule extra activities to make up for what was lost. You need to plan a separate walk for sunlight. You need to carve out time to meet a friend, rather than just naturally socializing while biking.
I feel strongly about this. While I carefully avoid tracking personal stats, I still catch myself atomizing activities in pursuit of optimization—or rather, the illusion of saving time.
I'm becoming increasingly skeptical of "optimization" as a way of living, and I hope this piece, along with Julia's & Nat's essays, inspires you to question the role of gamification in your personal life and rediscover the richness of de-atomizing your leisure activities.
— James
Tools & Websites
Cursor is an AI code editor that's been very popular these last few months. I gave it a shot this week and was amazed—anyone with an idea can now truly build their own apps.
Let's Bend the Curve is a website project by Thibaud Clement that calculates your environmental impact based on your web activity (Netflix streams, ChatGPT requests, Google searches, etc.). It also comes with an interesting blog post about internet and electricity consumption.
Poolsuite Partners is the digital agency behind the stunning brands and websites of Vacation Inc. and Poolsuite (Radio FM). Go check all three websites, seriously.
James’ Library
Article | Julia Alexander brilliantly argues that the internet is turning joy into competition—and competition has become our last desperate attempt at connection. In a world where everything is measured, even our leisure is transformed into a race for validation. As qualitative validation all but erodes, the only form of validation left is quantitative. Miles run. Books read. Movies watched. Songs streamed. Beers bought. Fantasy wins. We have turned competition into connection because it’s the only way we’ve learned that we can get attention — and when you see a continuous decline in relationships outside of your phone because spaces continue to disappear, you’ll cling to whatever you can to feel like you belong to a larger world. That’s without taking into account how the platforms themselves use gamifying tactics, preying on emotional and physical impulses and serotonin boosts, to ensure that the little device in our hands connecting us to those competitive blurry faced strangers, feels more important than trying to form quality connections elsewhere. |
Article | Nat Eliason’s essay serves as a compelling companion to Julia’s, expanding on the idea of atomization. He argues that our obsession with optimization leads us to strip activities down to their most functional elements, severing them from the richer experiences that once made them fulfilling. Over time, this fragmentation not only makes life more efficient but also less satisfying. Then when we feel lonely, painfully isolated by our atomized life, we schedule some atomized social time like going to a bar or coffee to see friends in between our lonely work and lonely dinner because we’ve removed most of the natural socializing elements from all of the other parts of life. Atomization turns an integrated day of socializing, eating, exercising, and working into discrete hurried chunks of trying to move from one thing to another, wondering why we never seem to have time for everything. |
…Aesthetic Corner…
For the first time on film, Bertie Gregory captured emperor penguin chicks leaping from a 50-foot Antarctic cliff. The images are surreal—watch the video here.
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The Ear (a) are Nothing's award-winning earphones, celebrated for both sound quality and design. Their companion app lets you customize EQ, activate noise cancellation, and enable dual connection—plus it comes with ChatGPT integration. At $99, they're reasonably priced, especially compared to AirPods Pro.
Sustainable Living
Julia turned her tiny 21sqm (235sqft) Gramercy Park apartment into a design playground, tweaking layouts and aesthetics until everything felt just right. Living alone for the first time, she wanted a space that felt calm, cohesive, and personal. With south-facing windows and charming moldings as a backdrop, she leaned into a muted color palette and smart storage to keep things uncluttered but full of character.
Every piece serves a purpose. Her sofa is both a cozy lounge spot and a guest bed, while an oval antique coffee table offers function without overwhelming the space. As a renter, she made subtle upgrades—swapping cabinet hardware, adding dramatic curtains—small tweaks that make a big impact without major renovations.
Sustainability is woven into her design choices, favoring antiques and secondhand finds over disposable trends. Instead of chasing fast decor, she focuses on timeless, personal pieces that make the space feel lived-in and intentional. Proof that even the smallest homes can have big style.
Friends of James
Beehiiv — the powerhouse behind all my newsletters, helping me craft, design, grow my audience, and monetize effortlessly.
Notion — my go-to tool for the last 6+ years, where I store all my notes, manage tasks, and essentially run both my life and businesses.
Webflow — the engine behind all my websites, letting me design, build, and launch seamlessly without code.
Make — the tool that runs my business on autopilot, handling all recurring and time-consuming tasks
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