The Beauty of Pointlessness

Even if you know very little about The Big Lebowski, you probably know that The Dude loves bowling. The Dude and bowling go together. They just fit right in there together.

Now I’m no mind reader, but I suspect the Dude loves bowling for its own sake. Sure, he enjoys the camaraderie of Walter and Donny, and the bowling alley is a decent place to get a cold oat soda, but my hunch is that the Dude doesn't treat bowling instrumentally. He does not treat bowling as a means to some other end: he's not bowling to burn calories, network with business contacts, or improve his hand-eye coordination. The Dude gives zero fucks about optimization. I suspect he just bowls and enjoys the simple pleasure of trying to hit pins with a heavy ball. There is no larger purpose.

The rest of us, though? We've forgotten how to be like The Dude. It seems like so many of our daily activities are not done for their own sake, but for the promise of achieving something.

Take the so-called Huberman morning routine. His meticulously timed regimen demands morning sunlight, exercise, precisely timed caffeine, cold showers, and hydration. Huberman cloaks this routine in scientific legitimacy, throwing around terms like cortisol spikes and testosterone optimization, despite the evidence he cites being dubious at best. What's most troubling is how he's transformed morning routines from potentially enjoyable rituals into productivity optimization algorithms. None of these steps are recommended because they feel good or bring joy; they're prescribed based on the misplaced belief that they'll mathematically optimize your health and productivity like you're some kind of human spreadsheet.

Even meditation—a practice about being present—has been instrumentalized. Meditation apps don't promise the experience of quieting the mind; they promise productivity boosts, stress reduction, better focus. "Ten minutes a day to be 10% happier!" But what if meditation doesn't help with any of that? What if it's just sitting there noticing your thoughts? Isn’t that enough?

Things that were once pure pleasure have been transformed into health imperatives. Psychedelics shouldn't be taken because they can be fun AF, but because they can improve mental health. Rest isn't about blissful relaxation, but a means to recharge so we emerge more productive. When did we stop doing things just because?

This hit me recently when I came across a fascinating study about mice appearing to do things just for the fun of it. Scientists placed running wheels in natural settings to see if wild animals would use them voluntarily, without any rewards or incentives.

What they discovered was startling. Wild mice not only found and used the wheels but did so frequently and enthusiastically. Even when researchers removed all food from the experimental area, the mice still came to run on the wheels. It wasn't just mice either: the researchers recorded frogs, shrews, and even slugs voluntarily using the wheels. (And don’t ask me how a slug possibly uses a running wheel, but the authors provided receipts).

The conclusion was clear: these animals were running for the pure joy of running. No rewards, no external purpose, no optimization, no 30 minutes of cardio to burn 300 calories. Running on a wheel just because.

When's the last time you did something just because it was fun? No health benefit to justify the time spent. Just pure, purposeless fun.

I am far from the only one complaining about today's optimization culture. This obsession with turning every moment into a productivity hack has been critiqued by thinkers much sharper than me, who've recognized how we're increasingly trapped in a cycle of optimizing our lives rather than living them.

One voice that particularly resonates with me is Jenny Odell, the American artist and writer whose book How to Do Nothing became my minor obsession a couple years back. Odell eloquently articulates the need to disconnect from the modern world's constant demands and instead rediscover what truly moves us, things like birds, art, and beauty. In her work, she offers a powerful critique of our productivity-obsessed culture, arguing that "life is more than an instrument and therefore not something that can be optimized." Instead of chasing efficiency, she advocates creating space to orient ourselves beyond the relentless pressure to produce.

But…

As much as I really loved Odell’s book, I sometimes sensed a shadow of purpose creeping into her vision of rest. Odell doesn’t quite advocate for doing nothing simply because it feels good. Instead, she reframes it as resistance to capitalism—a form of political action. Even in her world, birds, art, and beauty end up getting drafted into a larger cause. Their admiration becomes a kind of resistance—a way of pushing back against the system.

So even in a book called How to Do Nothing, we’re still doing something.

As it turns out, doing things to get something else isn't a recipe for happiness. Research consistently shows that activities we do for their inherent enjoyment lead to better well-being than those driven by external rewards.

The problem with optimization culture is that it imposes external goals on things that might be inherently pleasurable; optimization is always about the outcome, never the process. When we optimize our morning routines, we're not doing so because the routine itself is inherently pleasurable; we're doing it to maximize some future benefit—productivity, health markers, longevity. It transforms activities that could be enjoyable into mere instruments for achieving external goals.

And here's where our optimization culture really screws us: when we take activities we naturally enjoy and attach external rewards to them, we often end up enjoying them less—a phenomenon psychologists call the "overjustification effect."

In one classic study, when children who liked drawing were rewarded for drawing, they subsequently showed less interest in drawing during their free time compared to children who weren't rewarded. The external reward had somehow contaminated the intrinsic pleasure.

Think about what that means for our optimization obsession. All these apps and routines designed to make us better might actually be making us enjoy things less. They're turning play into work, pleasure into obligation, and intrinsic joy into extrinsic accounting.

The wild mice on running wheels remind us of something we've forgotten: that some activities need no justification beyond the simple joy they bring. The pleasure of the activity itself is reason enough. And it’s not just mice who do things for fun, bees play for the fun of it too.

I should clarify something here. As someone who studies self-control, I'd be the last person to argue against delayed gratification. Pushing through difficult tasks for future benefits is clearly important. But we've created a culture where so little is allowed to be immediately pleasurable without future justification. We need breaks from this constant future-orientation. My complaint isn't with productivity, but with the insistence that every activity must optimize some aspect of our existence. I mean, we're even foregoing the simple pleasures of getting drunk because it detracts from some optimized future self.

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Finnish people, consistently ranked as the happiest people in the world, already know this. Their attitude toward saunas reveals everything. As a New York Times article explains:

In Finland, sauna is not a means to an end. It will not make a person richer or more attractive or more focused. The point is not to sweat out “toxins,” though that may occur — I’m not a scientist. The point seems to be the act itself: sitting in nude serenity among family, friends and strangers, safe in the bone-deep sense of trust that such an idyll both requires and reinforces.

So maybe it's time we all channeled a bit more of The Dude in our lives. Not because it'll optimize our productivity or extend our lifespans, but simply because sometimes, like those wild mice on wheels or Finns in saunas, the pleasure of the thing itself is the whole damn point.