On my For You Page, the content started rolling in right alongside the New Year’s Resolution videos. First there were memes about “project planning” a 2026 reinvention, complete with an iPad and Apple Pencil for spreadsheet-making and Pinterest collaging. Then came the greenscreened screenshots of Notes app listing out exactly how users planned on upgrading their lives, endless lists of tasks for physical and mental well-being that seemed to require about five extra hours in a standard day. Just in time for January, the product demos started to populate my algorithm, and I suddenly needed them all: the gratitude journal, the weighted sleep mask, the vibration plate for lymphatic drainage, the mouth tape, the personalized vitamins that promised to coax out my glowiest, most focused self. My journey to wellness suddenly seemed just as logistical as it was aspirational, something to optimize, modify, and cram into an already-jam-packed day. 

On its face, the wellnessmaxxing trend–you might hear it called “habit-stacking”–is simply the practice of trying to maximize your time by performing as many self-care and personally productive tasks as possible at once. How that looks in practice varies wildly, from wearing under eye patches while answering emails, to attempting to meditate while on a walking pad with a red light therapy helmet strapped to your head to stimulate hair growth. Curiously, all of the more viral proponents of the trend seem to require some serious equipment—at least several hundred dollars worth in any given TikTok–and the same goal-obsessed mentality as any scrappy startup CEO. And oftentimes, said CEO and wellness culture even share the same HR-department-head-meets-proselytizing-evangelical speech patterns and vocabulary. In a society where up to 66% of us report feeling burned out at work, is applying the same productivity-at-all-costs mindset helping, or just adding to the exhausting pile of to-dos? 

The Rise of Wellnessmaxxing

While there’s no official jumping-off point, you can really trace the craze’s origins to the post-pandemic work-from-home wave. Suddenly, it was possible to multitask, weaving domestic and personal tasks into the remote workday. Who among us didn’t take a work call from the grocery store, or log off early to catch a 4 p.m. workout class? But what began as a pragmatic response to a new way of working slowly expanded into a broader philosophy, and it’s one that increasingly treats every idle moment as wasted. 

Even the term habit-stacking has been a bit bastardized, or TikTokified, if you will. Originally, it was a behavioral-training model that builds new routines by linking them, Pavlovianly, to existing ones. If you brush your teeth every morning, for example, and start taking your vitamins directly after, soon enough, the tooth-brushing becomes an automatic mental trigger to take your vitamins. These days, though, the term is more akin to task compression—a term workplace project managers use for attempting to cram together as many functions as possible simultaneously. And that’s where we start getting the videos of people speedrunning a half-dozen different self-care tasks at the same time. Of course, there’s always a new product available that promises to streamline them all: use these satin-wrapped rods to get a blowout while you sleep; wear this ring to count your steps and “score” your sleep (one of the most gameified habits of all); slip this face mask on while you drive to the gym. 

It’s a natural impulse to question the idea of “wellness” altogether, especially since its current iteration looks and feels focused primarily on aesthetics. Sure, there are the self-help books—usually with some sort of peppy millennial curse word in the title—and the feel-good podcasts, and practices like meditation or affirmations are almost always a good idea. But on social media, the bulk of habit-stacking revolves around maximizing one’s appearance. Improving your looks is definitely less nebulous than some vague idea of wellness, but trying to reach some mythical aesthetic endgame can be just as all-consuming. When maximizing your time becomes a full-time job, do you ever get to just log off? At some point, the dedication to being your most well self has to become circular, taking a greater toll than the purported value it’s delivering. Self-care is supposed to be what helps stave off the burnout, but it often feels now like it’s just accelerating the process. Wellness, in its most visible form, has become another performance metric. 

The online commitment to this modern idea of wellness dovetails with the mainstreaming of looksmaxxing, the more aesthetically-driven side of the coin. The latter might be more overt about a commitment to visual goals, but much of the wellness movement is measured by the same metrics, like clear skin and a fit physique. Both trends treat the body as a project, with endless opportunity for optimization, and its visible results serving as a testament to your dedication, drive, and commitment.  

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The Cost of Wellnessmaxxing

There is nothing inherently wrong with the desire to make the most of your time or your looks. It has to be asked, though—where should the line be drawn between a commitment to self-improvement and a spiral into self-harm? At what point does dedication turn into obsession? Dr. Sanam Hafeez, a New York City-based neuropsychologist, explains our near-constant proximity to social media—and the highly curated, often edited and filtered versions of others we see—has made us all more aware of our appearances altogether. Dr. Hafeez notes that a commitment to physical self-improvement can be a very positive thing, but warns that it can veer into more compulsive territory.

“It is clearly unhealthy when it supplants hobbies, work, socializing, or obligations. When it no longer feels ‘fun’ but anxiety-ridden, it has crossed the line,” she explains. Taking a step back from the constant deluge of looks-based content is also critical for keeping your head above water. Despite studies and surveys on the benefits of attractiveness, there’s no amount of “leveling up” or aesthetic alteration at which all of your problems vanish—wherever you go, as the saying dictates, there you are. Dr. Nona Kocher, a board-certified psychologist, points out that “no matter how objectively beautiful someone might be, it does not guarantee a happy marriage [or] partnership, material comfort, health, a life free of worry or tragedy, or career success.” 

So where exactly does the inclined walking pad lead us from here? It seems like in a totally understandable attempt to optimize our lives, we’ve just made them more difficult—and if you factor in the equipment, products, and classes, much more expensive. Looking and feeling good was always the original goal. Somewhere along the way, though, wellness stopped being something we experienced and became something we performed. Ironically, disengaging from the most viral self-care practices might be the key to actual self-help. When the only options feel like bedrotting or relentless self-optimization, the real rebellion may be caring for ourselves without acting as though our boss is watching. And really, everyone feels more buoyant without ankle weights in the grocery store.