In our current day and age, we see a lot of hyper individualism on social media. There are lots of reminders to protect your peace (where people are encouraged to cancel on your friends) and it's all about you, your self-care and your career. This may sometimes be portrayed as healthy progress: exercising more, taking more rest, drinking less alcohol. And while this is of course all very important to your physical and mental wellbeing, I would like to bring some nuance to this topic.
Self-care has been captured by productivity culture
The way to do all this self-care besides having a nine to five job is to be more productive, organize better and set up your perfect routine. From “habit stacking” to “non-negotiables,” the self-help industry preaches productivity as a path to personal fulfillment. But this obsession with efficiency often comes at a cost. When every hour of the day is meticulously planned and every moment is accounted for, what’s left for the spontaneous joys of life?
The idea of “self-care” has been co-opted to fuel the capitalist machine, subtly pushing us to see time spent on anything other than self-optimization as wasteful.
This simple act of prioritizing others, of willingly sacrificing personal productivity for the sake of community, can be a powerful form of self-care. Yet, in a culture where success is often measured by individual achievements, we’ve been conditioned to think that any time spent on others detracts from our personal growth.
Convenience is making our lives less romantic. Each time I choose convenience because of a lack of capacity (or care or both), it caches up to me in some way later. Often in burnout. Sometimes in guilt. And sometimes after realizing I treated a message like a notification from an app instead of an invitation from a person. (@ktippyy)
Choosing between yourself and others
The "independent girl boss" trope feeds into this illusion of self-sufficiency. It glamorizes the idea of being wholly independent, needing nothing from anyone else. It is a dangerous narrative that overlooks the fact that no one, no matter how successful, truly thrives alone. This form of hyper-individualism isolates us, convincing us that asking for help or relying on others is a sign of weakness.
Especially when you’re working 40 hours a week, 9 to 5, the only way for many people to maintain that lifestyle is through a strict routine: booking Pilates classes, meal prepping, and structuring every detail. This routine becomes essential to maintaining physical and mental health in order to endure such a demanding work life. As a result, community gets relegated to the weekend: Friday night drinks, Sunday morning brunch. That’s the only consistent access to community, especially if you live alone.
But if you live in a communal space, whether with friends, housemates, or family—you can’t adhere to this routine as rigidly. In the TikTok from @jordstac about the concept of "community disrupts routine", she elaborates on this by saying: "The other day I came home from work exhausted, planning to just go to yoga and then head to bed. But when I got home, someone I live with had a terrible day. And being part of a community means being there for others, so I set aside my routine. Obviously, I couldn’t just say, “Sorry, you’re disrupting my schedule; I’m off to yoga.” I gave time to my community instead."
There's this constant push and pull between routine and community. Because of working in a capitalistic society with a focus on working and consuming we have limited time for either ourselves or the people around us, forcing us to constantly choose.
"If not, no worries" as learned self-protection
Furthermore, our culture of hyper-individualism has led to the rise of what some call the “if not, no worries” phenomenon. We make plans with others, but we immediately undercut our requests by adding, "If you're busy, no worries!" with an underlying fear of being rejected. It’s a way to protect ourselves from disappointment, but it also weakens our own needs. We’re so scared of being a burden that we don’t trust our friends to say no if they genuinely can’t accommodate us. We shrink our needs to make ourselves more palatable, more independent, more self-reliant. But in doing so, we miss out on the deep connections that come from vulnerability.
As The Washington Post wrote about in their article "Would you be mine? Could you be mine? Would you be my friend?"⤴, If you want close friendships, we need to act as if we're already in them. Give people the opportunity to care about you. There's this thing called risk taking in a friendship. For a friendship to deepen, it involves a risk: asking for something and not knowing how they'll answer; putting yourself out there at the risk of being "too much"; asking a new person out on a friend date. That feels very vulnerable. But it's also the only way to start a good friendship.
Low-stakes friendship are undervalued
Our society has also come to dismiss casual, “low-stakes” friendships. We've been conditioned to think that unless a friendship is intense and all-consuming, it isn’t worth much. Especially in the current digital age where we have always-on, never-ending streams of communication, we're caught in a web of perpetual availability, where the line between connecting and intruding blurs, and the pressure to be constantly "on" for our friends becomes psychologically taxing.
As @maalvika wrote in her Substack "more on low-stakes friendships"⤴, the rise of social media has created a culture of performative friendship, where depth is often measured by the frequency and intensity of interactions.
But this overlooks the value of casual connections, or "weak ties," as sociologist Mark Granovetter⤴ famously called them. These weaker, more casual friendships are essential for social mobility, the diffusion of ideas, and overall mental well-being. Not every relationship needs to be high-stakes or deeply emotional. Sometimes, just having someone to share a laugh with over a coffee break or run errands with can be just as fulfilling as a deep, late-night heart-to-heart. These interactions are about simply enjoying each other's company, without the pressure of constant emotional availability.
Living in a world with people around you
In a society that glorifies independence, one of the most radical acts of resistance is building true community. To care for one another. Not as a transaction, but as a genuine act of love and support. This is a form of defiance against the capitalist system that seeks to isolate us. Whether it’s running errands with friends, taking down Christmas decorations with your neighbor, or offering a favor without expecting anything in return, these acts of community care are the essence of real self-care.
We have to choose community over routine more often. We should be vulnerable to build intimate friendships. Give the other the opportunity to care about you. But do not expect that one friend will fill all your emotional needs. It's alright to have one friend for deep chats and another for going out nights. We have to show up for each other and take a risk sometimes. Please ask a stranger how he's doing this week.
(..) because I want to move synchronically with others. Literally. It's a reminder that the world isn't such a lonely place after all. And this coordination is what I missed so much while being a digital nomad. The ability to sacrifice my time for other people. To collaborate. To spend this short life on earth in good company. So just give it a try. Loosen the iron grip over your schedule. Say yes to that invitation. Sign up for that dance class. Sacrifice your sacred hours of productivity for a family breakfast. - Stephan Joppich on his blog about the book Four Thousand Weeks