15 Cigarettes a Day Is the Cost of Trying to Be Better

Perfectionism is accelerating. Loneliness is epidemic. The self-improvement industry connects them.

Photo by Dwayne joe on Unsplash

The US Surgeon General dropped a number that stopped me: loneliness carries the same health risk as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. The WHO estimates it kills 871,000 people every year. About 100 deaths an hour.

Meanwhile, the self-improvement industry is booming. Supplements. Gym memberships. Cosmetic surgery. Courses and coaches and certifications. All selling the same promise: fix yourself, and everything will be fine.

A major meta-analysis published last year in Psychological Bulletin tracked 82,939 college students over 35 years. Perfectionism is accelerating. Socially-prescribed perfectionism — the sense that everyone expects you to be perfect — spiked sharply after 2000.

So we’re getting more optimized. And more lonely.

Those two things are connected.

Here’s how we got here.

The Gap That Keeps Growing

Here’s a number worth sitting with.

In 1965, the average CEO made 20.4 times what their workers made. By 2022, that was 344.3 times. A 1,538% increase in the gap over 57 years. From 1978 to 2022, worker pay grew just 15.3% in total. The Economic Policy Institute has the full breakdown.

I’ve watched friends spend thousands on certifications and coaching, trying to optimize their way into security. But the gap between effort and reward isn’t a personal problem. It’s structural.

No amount of self-improvement closes a 344x gap.

And yet we keep trying. Because what’s the alternative? If you stop optimizing, you fall behind. That’s the trap.

Everyone Expects You to Be Perfect

The perfectionism study tracked 82,939 college students over 35 years. It tells us something specific. It’s not just that people want to be better. It’s that socially-prescribed perfectionism — the belief that others demand perfection from you — is rising fastest. That spike came after 2000. People aren’t driving themselves harder in isolation. They’re responding to a culture that says you’re never enough.

Look around. Your social feed is a highlight reel of people who seem to have it together. The girl who tracks every macro. The guy who built a side hustle while working full-time. The friend who read 52 books last year while running a marathon.

The message is subtle but constant: why aren’t you doing more?

I’ve watched people chase this for years. The certification leads to a better job, which requires more certifications. The fitness routine tightens until there’s no room for spontaneity. Every hobby becomes a side project. Every conversation becomes networking.

Who Gets What You’re Optimizing For

The self-improvement market runs on a simple insight: every insecurity is a product opportunity. Every anxiety about your future is a course you can buy.

So who benefits when you believe you’re never enough?

Not you. The WHO’s Commission on Social Connection found that 1 in 6 people worldwide is affected by loneliness. We’re more connected digitally and more isolated in every way that matters.

The people who benefit are the ones selling the fix. The employers who get more productive workers without raising wages. The platforms that monetize your desire to be better.

This didn’t happen by accident. It was built.

The Cruel Part

Philosopher Lauren Berlant called this “cruel optimism.” You’re attached to a fantasy that’s making things worse. The dream of upward mobility. The belief that if you just optimize hard enough, you’ll make it.

The ideas behind this system earned Nobel Prizes. Hayek in 1974. Friedman in 1976. The economics prize was created in 1968 by Sweden’s central bank, not by Alfred Nobel. The Nobel Foundation still awards it under the same rules, but the funding source matters — this prize was established specifically to promote market-based economics. And it worked. Those ideas shaped global policy for decades.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan took office and cut the top tax rate from 70% to 28%. He slashed housing programs. By 1988, the HUD budget had been cut 77%. Subsidized housing dropped from 224,000 units a year to 88,000. By the late 80s, roughly 600,000 people were homeless on any given night.

And in 1984, Reagan went on Good Morning America and said some homeless people are homeless “by choice.”

That’s cruel optimism in action. The belief that if you fail, it’s because you didn’t try hard enough. The system is fine. You’re the problem.

I get it. I’ve done some of the self-improvement thing. And some of it genuinely helps. Reading more is good. Getting stronger is good. Learning new skills is good.

But when optimization becomes the baseline, when rest feels like falling behind, and connection feels unproductive, something has broken.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

What Actually Works

Here’s what I’ve watched play out. The people who burn out aren’t the ones who stopped improving. They’re the ones who made optimization their identity.

The people who do okay? They protect the stuff that matters. Real conversations. Time that isn’t productive. Relationships that aren’t strategic.

No supplement or productivity system replaces that. The WHO’s June 2025 report confirmed what many already feel: social isolation is a global health emergency linked to 871,000 deaths each year. You cannot optimize your way out of that.

The pressure to constantly improve isn’t a sign you’re failing. It’s a sign the system is working exactly as designed.

The question that sits with me is this: if we all got exactly what we’re optimizing for — the perfect body, the perfect career, the perfect productivity system — would we actually be happier? Or would we just be really efficient at being lonely?

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