There was a time when self-improvement had a useful boundary. You went to the gym because you wanted to be fitter. You used a good moisturiser because you wanted better skin. You tried to sleep eight hours because you wanted to feel less exhausted. Improvement had an end game, or at least the possibility of one.

Then the internet turned the self into a project with no finish line.

Today, young men are looksmaxxing, trying to optimise every variable of their appearance. Sleepmaxxing promises to optimise the hours spent sleeping. Proteinmaxxing turns lunch into a spreadsheet. Productivitymaxxing treats every unproductive minute as a personal failure. Even nonnamaxxing is packaged as a lifestyle: cooking slowly, gardening, drinking tea, doing nothing on purpose. It uses the exact same language as the optimisation culture it appears to be walking away from.

The word itself started in gaming, with ‘min-maxing’ where players would optimise different character attributes to maximise performance. The maxxing suffix has travelled a long way from its origins in online subcultures and the manosphere, where looksmaxxing meant aggressively optimising physical attractiveness. It has morphed into a term for going all in on almost anything. It has travelled this far because it reveals something real about how this generation copes with modern living.

India is beginning to see both ends of this culture. Recent coverage has documented the rise of looksmaxxing, including growing interest in mewing, grooming and appearance enhancement for men and women. At the other end, Indian Gen Z is romanticising habits their grandmothers have practised for generations: slow cooking, veranda chai, gardening, walks, doing very little. On the surface, bonesmashing for a better jawline and sitting around drinking chai could not be further apart. Psychologically, they may be closer than they look. Brands that understand that psychology will speak to this audience far better than brands that just borrow the vocabulary.

So, it's worth asking why does maxxing feel so psychologically satisfying.

In a world that feels economically precarious, socially confusing and emotionally unstable, maxxing can feel like a rational response. Four psychological drivers help explain why the behaviour is so compelling.

The first reason is control. There is a lot about modern life that cannot be controlled. Whether people like you. Whether your career works out. Whether you will find a partner. Whether you will be financially secure. Whether AI will make your job more valuable or less valuable. When the larger world feels uncertain, maxxing offers something to control: your face, your sleep, your diet, your savings, your routine.

The second is progress. Most of the things we care about are frustratingly difficult to measure. Am I becoming more successful? Am I happier? Am I attractive enough? Am I doing well in life? Maxxing turns vague ambitions into visible ones. Before-and-after photographs, sleep scores, step counts, body measurements, savings trackers and streaks give improvement a scoreboard. Every like, every gain, every "win" triggers a dopamine hit that reinforces the behavior.

The third is identity. Maxxing gives an obsession a name. You are not simply interested in fitness; you are gymmaxxing. You are not simply trying to sleep better; you are sleepmaxxing. The behaviour becomes a signal of who you are. In a culture where identity is something we construct and display online, that matters. Naming a behaviour turns it into a badge. It tells the world, and yourself, what kind of person you are.

The fourth is belonging. Maxxing looks intensely individualistic, but it is remarkably social. Maxxing communities offer shared vocabulary (mogging, softmaxxing, nonnamaxxing), shared rituals (mewing, napping, gardening), and shared identity. For people who might otherwise feel alone or invisible, these communities offer purpose, peer connection and social belonging.

Control. Progress. Identity. Belonging. Put those four things together and the appeal of maxxing becomes fairly obvious.

The temptation is to treat maxxing as another consumer opportunity: identify the next thing people can optimise, give it a name, create a metric around it, and sell them the solution. But that misses the behaviour and the underlying need. Why does this person feel the need to optimise this in the first place?

The consumer who is looksmaxxing may be looking for control. The one tracking sleep may be looking for reassurance. The one building an elaborate fitness routine may be looking for measurable progress. The one romanticising dadi’s crochet may be looking for belonging or a sense of continuity.

The behaviour changes. The underlying needs are consistent.

Brands have an enormous commercial opportunity when people believe they are constant works in progress. The beauty industry built an empire on this logic. What maxxing has done is democratize and expand that framework far beyond vanity, to every aspect of ourselves. There's almost nothing left that can't be optimized, your face, your sleep, your productivity, your finances, even, apparently, your leisure

Historically, the best consumer businesses succeeded by identifying an existing human need and building a product to fulfill it. Now businesses can do something more profitable: create a new category of need first and then sell the solution. Suddenly, consumers who previously felt fine find themselves needing sleep readiness scores, continuous glucose monitoring, daily productivity dashboards, and facial symmetry scores.

The real question for marketers and founders isn't 'what problem are we solving,' it's whether we're solving an existing anxiety or manufacturing a new one. And I hope we answer that question with some level of responsibility. Because I don't think most of us are optimising anything. I think we're all just trying to feel, for five minutes, like we're not behind.

Maxxing won't stay one thing, and it probably won't stay around forever. The vocabulary of the internet always moves on. Another suffix will replace it, another behaviour will become the thing everyone is suddenly talking about.

What won't disappear is the unfinished self. That's not a trend. It's a consumer need, now more than ever. 

The author is the founder of Athina, a brand and cultural intelligence platform.