What Are We Optimizing For?

Thoughts on Biohacking and a Life Worth Extending

By Fleet Maull, PhD

Biohacking has become a remarkably broad field. It can include everything from sleep trackers, smart rings, cold exposure, red-light therapy, supplements, and continuous glucose monitors to changes in nutrition, exercise, recovery, and nervous system regulation. Underneath all of it is a fairly understandable impulse: we want to feel better, function better, and remain healthy for as long as we can.

I find that impulse both natural and, in many ways, encouraging. The conversation around longevity has been shifting, from life span to health span: instead of counting years of life, we now focus on how long we can live with good physical health, cognitive capacity, mobility, energy, and quality of life. I don't see anything wrong with wanting to extend that. If we can live longer and remain healthier while doing so, that is a positive development.

Biohacking is also about much more than longevity. It can help us think more carefully about brain health, physical performance, metabolic health, sleep, recovery, and the functioning of the nervous system. It can support our ability to work, create, exercise, think clearly, and simply feel more at home in our bodies.

At the same time, this is also where some caution is needed. The desire to improve our health can gradually become a preoccupation with perfecting ourselves. We can begin to believe that if we find the right supplement, the right device, the right diet, the right sleep score, or the right protocol, we will finally arrive at some ideal version of ourselves. There is always one more thing to measure, adjust, or improve. That can become exhausting, and it can also reinforce a deeper sense that we are somehow not enough as we are.

There is now an enormous commercial industry growing around biohacking and longevity, and much of it is driven by genuine innovation. But, like any rapidly expanding industry, it also requires discernment. The quality of the evidence varies wildly from one product to the next, supplement companies don't all hold themselves to the same standards, and the fact that an intervention is possible doesn't mean it makes sense for every person or is worth what it costs.

So part of approaching biohacking intelligently is learning to be selective. We need to educate ourselves, look carefully at the evidence, pay attention to quality, and make choices that are realistic for our own bodies and our own lives. Otherwise, the pursuit of health can easily become another form of consumerism, with the constant suggestion that there is something else we need to buy before we can feel fully well.

There is another tension here that I think is important. We can take very good care of ourselves and still recognize that our bodies are impermanent. We can do everything we can to remain healthy, strong, clear-minded, and capable, while also understanding that aging is part of life and that this life will eventually end. Those two perspectives do not have to be in conflict.

In fact, remembering impermanence can bring more intelligence to the way we approach health. It can help us distinguish between caring for the body and trying to control the uncontrollable. We can value longevity without turning it into a battle against aging. We can appreciate the body deeply without expecting it to last forever.

For me, this leads to a much more interesting question than simply, How long can I live?  The question is: What do I want to do with more life?

If we become healthier, if we have more energy, if our nervous systems are more regulated, if our minds remain clearer for longer, what is that increased capacity actually for?

In some wisdom traditions, there is a commitment to live as long as possible because human life is understood as an extraordinary opportunity. More years means more time to practice, to awaken, to become more conscious, and to serve. From that point of view, supporting our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being becomes a way of making the best possible use of the life we've been given. The same is true whether or not we use spiritual language. More health can mean more time with our families, more capacity to contribute, and more energy to create, work, explore, learn, help others, and simply enjoy being alive. It means being fully present for the life that's already here.

This is where I think biohacking can become genuinely meaningful. The point, for me, is not optimization for its own sake; it is building the capacity to live a life we actually want. If better sleep makes us more patient and present with the people we love, that matters. So does improving our physical health if it keeps us active and engaged as we age, or regulating the nervous system so we become less reactive and more available to others. Cognitive health matters too, if it gives us more years to learn, practice, teach, create, and contribute.

The problem begins when optimization itself becomes the purpose: when we get so focused on tracking the body that we stop inhabiting it, or spend so much time trying to extend life that we lose touch with the life already happening.

So I remain very interested in biohacking and optimistic about where some of these developments may lead. I believe we will continue to learn a great deal about how to support healthier and longer lives, and I think that is worth pursuing.  But alongside the question of how we can optimize ourselves, there is another question worth keeping close: What are we optimizing ourselves for? More health, more energy, and perhaps even more years are wonderful possibilities. What ultimately matters is what we do with them.