Confession time: Not so long ago, I was a 40+ mom and entrepreneur, with a calendar so packed with coaching sessions, fitness consults, nutrition webinars, and school PTMs that I had started outsourcing, even my sighs. Not only that, I needed one woman on Zoom to remind me to breathe, a second to tell me to eat dal with vegetables on time, and a third, on a parenting webinar to coach me through real time teen talk. All while my cat judged me silently from his throne by the bay window. When did this shift happen? We used to be Gen X, the generation that did everything. Now we outsource things we used to call “daily life.”
Health? Parenting? Cooking? Outsourced, baby.
Back in the day, you lifted your toddler, your grocery bags, and occasionally your drunk colleague at an office party. That was functional fitness. Now we need wearable tech just to confirm we’re still alive.
We call it “self-care,” but honestly, it feels more like outsourced micromanagement.
In 2024, the global wellness industry hit a staggering $5.6 trillion. The fitness sector alone clocked in at $260 billion, that’s more than the GDP of Finland. And yet, global obesity rose by 10%, and lifestyle diseases climbed right alongside our gym subscriptions.
The Life Optimisation Racket
Let me elaborate.
Take my own example, once upon a time, I was a runner. Not the “jog-to-clear-my-head” kind, but the medal-earning, occasional trophy-winning, start-line-craving kind, who picked 6 AM sprints over lazy Sunday brunches. Then came the charming midlife glitch. My hormones started freelancing without notice, tossing in a fresh plot twist every 24 hours. My body had gone rogue, without permission, switched operating systems and the new ones didn’t seem to support running or fitness apps. So , my “finish lines” have started looking like discomfort, surviving mood swings, and paying a subscription fee to a smiling woman named Anita, who cheered me on for doing four squats while yelling, “You’re crushing it, girl!” through my AirPods. For the record, Dear reader, I was not crushing it. I’m just trying not to pass out in my athleisure.
Rest? I Scheduled It Between Google Calendar and Existential Dread
I had an app that reminded me to hydrate. Another for deep breathing. One for gratitude journaling. And a meditation coach I ghosted on the regular. Even my rest was managed by digital assistants. My sleep tracker used to promptly tell me that I was failing at REM, and my step counter mocked me with a paltry 2,113 steps, most of which I racked up pacing during my daughter’s math tuition or frantically hunting for missing school supplies.
So Why Are We Still So Tired?
We’ve never had this much help. And yet we’ve never felt more depleted.
Why? Because while we’ve outsourced the actions, we’ve forgotten the instincts.
The instinct to rest. To say no. To feed our families without drama. To parent without a PhD in psychology.
Our mothers and aunts raised kids, made chutney from scratch, kept gossip fresh in the sisterhood, and still found time to crochet full blankets for every cousin in the extended family.
Me? I need two weeks’ notice to schedule a “Lifesaver”coffee meet-up with my bestie.
Because Comfort Is the New Oppression
Let’s be honest: modern life is so comfortable, it hurts.
Our kids aren’t fragile because they’re lazy, they’re fragile because the village is gone, and we replaced it with an app. They can’t tolerate boredom, discomfort, or delayed gratification. They need a curated environment to even fail in.
And we? We’ve outsourced their resilience, then act surprised when they melt down over the Wi-Fi going out.
My daughter had an athletic coach, a math tutor, and a YouTube algorithm that’s clearly more influential than me, and still, heaven forbid that she said, “good morning” without an eye-roll.
Back in the day, kids were raised with a glare, and the ever-present threat of public embarrassment.
Now? We throw around terms like coregulation, emotional scaffolding, and screen time audits.
We’ve traded scraped knees for curated childhoods.
We’re raising a generation that can’t tolerate hunger, frustration, silence, or waiting.
We’re outsourcing everything, except presence.
Really, Is this what thriving looks like now? Multitasking our way into micro-breakdowns?
The Myth of the Optimised Self
Last week, I made a simple moong dal veggie soup from scratch, and felt like I’d discovered fire. I even sent a photo to my husband at work. His response: “Wow! You cooked? During the week?”
I did. Without a meal kit, a diet chart, or spirulina powder. Just me, a pressure cooker, five ingredients, and a vague memory of how my mom did it, plus my cat, offering strategic death stares from the kitchen counter.
Then it finally dawned on me after 48 years of my existence and a hormonal crisis.
Turns out, we don’t need fancy detoxes.
We need memory.
We need simplicity.
And maybe fewer apps yelling “Calories!” every time we glance at a banana.
So Here’s the Real Talk
It embarrassing now even to admit, but its true, after trying everything else first, I finally stumbled onto the obvious and something that we have always known.
NO ONE is coming.
No one is going to eat your vegetables for you.
No one is going to teach your child to be kind.
No one is going to do your glute bridges.
Spoiler alert: The adult you have been waiting for?
It’s you. (Yeah, I was disappointed too.)
Finally, I understood I needed an immediate intervention. My own.
As I deleted almost seventeen apps from my phone in one ruthless purge, a strange lightness settled inside me.
I cancelled my teens activity weekend classes.The air around me started to breathe easier.
Our schedule?
Suddenly as open and full of promise as a fresh notebook on January 1st.
I realised, sometimes clearing out clutter reminds us that life isn’t always about having more, but about feeling free and aligned with what truly matters.
A quiet joy began to rise in me and in that hush, I realised had stumbled into something rare, the kind of light, untethered moment that makes you feel , against all odds like “The Luckiest Girl On The Planet”.
So now, I get up early. I try to cook my own meals whenever possible. I walk 20 minutes in the morning without fail. I do a few squats workouts for another ten. Lift weights, if it is a good day. And maybe, just maybe, I also muster up the courage to ask my teen how her day was and schedule some bonding time over the weekend.
Parenting is now slowly becoming presence and not a chore.
Healthy meals have become fuel, not a fuss.
No AI coach. No app. No yoga mat sponsored by a gut cleanse.
For us at home, that’s health. That’s life. That’s parenting even with all its manic chaos.
What if the answer was never more help and efficient outsourcing, but always our habits?
The habits of needing our own attention, our own presence. In our own life.
As you can see, I am done outsourcing my life and I am taking this win.
About the Author:
Ancy James is a former television producer who, after a fulfilling 17-year career, chose to step away from the relentless pursuit of output and certainty in favour of retiring from corporate life at age 37, to a slower and more intentional life. In what she calls her act of quiet rebellion, her toddler’s health scare ensured she followed through on this decision and she traded deadlines and huge pay packets for meaningful quiet personal life. Now over 10 years later, She truly believes that our identity isn’t something we need to keep proving. It’s something we shape daily with the decisions we take for our loved ones. She now keeps herself busy as an internationally trained Cake Artist and Chef Trainer with a culinary diploma and runs a FSSAI approved business “Ancy’s Sugar Art Academy, in Bengaluru, India. She discovered marathon running in her journey to reversing her bone health diagnosis at age 42. When she is not customising cakes or running, she is busy reading books across the spectrum or spending hours pouring her heart out in these personal weekly memoirs. She shares raw, honest reflections on grief, resilience, motherhood, midlife reinvention, and the quiet beauty found in overlooked corners of everyday life. At 48, Ancy writes not to impress, but to connect, believing that vulnerability is the birthplace of both healing and growth. In a fast and AI driven world she believes her memoirs are her attempt to stay real and relevant as a female writer who is just embarking on her journey of “Becoming”.