Nowadays, many people feel as though they are caught up in a never-ending race. This is not necessarily a result of direct external pressure, but rather a pervasive demand that permeates various areas of life, such as work, health, relationships or personal development. In this context, everyday life can feel like a continuous process of optimisation, in which there always seems to be the possibility of performing better, improving or achieving a more efficient version of oneself. Added to this phenomenon is constant social comparison, intensified by constant access to social media and idealised lifestyles, which reinforces the perception that others are achieving greater well-being or balance, often generating feelings of inadequacy or negative self-evaluation.
In this context, the philosopher Byung-Chul Han has described a significant shift in contemporary societies, which consists of a transition from a logic based on external obligation—expressed in the phrase ‘you must’—to a logic based on positive self-demand, expressed in the phrase ‘you can’. This shift does not eliminate pressure, but rather transforms it, as the command is no longer perceived as something imposed from outside but becomes internalised as a constant personal demand. Consequently, the difficulty in achieving certain goals is not usually interpreted as the result of contextual or structural factors, but frequently as an individual failure, which can foster the emergence of emotions such as guilt, frustration or a persistent sense of inadequacy.
When this pattern of self-imposed pressure persists over time, it can lead to a range of psychological consequences, including difficulty relaxing without feeling guilty, a sense of not doing enough, and a tendency to turn virtually every aspect of life into a project of continuous improvement. In some cases, this can contribute to a state of emotional and mental exhaustion in which the person feels that, no matter what they do, they never achieve a stable or sufficient level of satisfaction.
In the face of this culture of constant performance, various psychological and philosophical approaches have highlighted the importance of reclaiming spaces for non-instrumentalised experience—that is, areas of life that are not geared exclusively towards productivity or constant optimisation. This implies recognising that not everything must be transformed into a measurable or improvable objective, and that rest, error and pause are legitimate parts of the human experience.
In this sense, a meaningful life cannot be reduced solely to one’s level of performance or efficiency; rather, it can be understood as one that allows for a certain degree of subjective agency—that is, the possibility of living in a way that is consistent with one’s own values, limits and needs, without being constantly influenced by social comparison or self-imposed pressure
