#52 Against Optimisation, In Favour of Optimism
A note to get 2026 properly started.
Hiiii. An intention note for the year ahead, and we’ll be back with investment theses in our next issue. No bearish news because we’re focusing on the positive in 2026—jk they’ll be back next week. xoxo Esther 💋
I’ve gone on record against New Year’s resolutions. My statement still stands.
What I’ve been doing in my personal life for a few years, however, is setting an intention. I don’t do it on January 1st, but on my birthday, which conveniently coincides with back-to-school season. Two birds, one stone. Whether your New Year starts on January 1st, September 1st, or May 27th really doesn’t matter. What does matter is the framework.
Resolutions are usually about removal: cutting sugar, alcohol, screens, rest, pleasure. When they inevitably fail, they produce a familiar residue of guilt. Not coincidentally, it feels vaguely Catholic. Intentions work differently. They’re additive. They orient you toward something positive, something that produces an immediate reward rather than a delayed sense of virtue.
In 2024, on my birthday, I promised myself I would go out more. Counterintuitive at 35? Perhaps. I had noticed something interesting in my early thirties: every time I had been on the fence about going out and eventually said yes, I never once regretted it. Quite the opposite, actually. Once it became a conscious intention, the effects were undeniable. I let loose. I danced. I met new people of all ages and solidified existing friendships. The hangovers were worth it.
Another example. On my 18th birthday, my intention was to incorporate at least one extravagant item into every outfit I wore. Futile? I like to think it made me memorable—assuming, of course, that everyone involved keeps the photographic evidence private. I’ll keep the intention I set on my last birthday to myself, just like the wish you make when you blow out your candles.
The point isn’t the content of the intention, but the direction of it. Instead of limiting yourself—dieting, abstaining, restricting—you fill your time and mental space with more. Paradoxically, what doesn’t serve you begins to fall away on its own. If instead of obsessing over screen time, you decide to write more (maybe by hand?), create more—food, embroidery, tapestries, plants—your TikTok screentime suddenly will have to take a step back. Not through discipline, but redirection. How joyful. This is also, incidentally, how self-esteem is built: you keep promises to yourself. You show up. The reward loop becomes endless.
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A quick note on manifestation. You hear the word being thrown carelessly everywhere these days. It’s important to note that manifesting isn’t telling yourself, “I want more of xyz”, but instead tricking yourself into bridging the gap between what you lack and what you want by telling yourself “, I have xyz.” The specifics fall into place by tricking your brain into believing it’s not only possible but present in your life already.
Just in case you thought that was pseudoscience: cognitive reframing is proven by neuroscience. And since the brain tends to show a negative bias, an active reframing into a positive might be necessary, until it becomes second nature. In other words, you might feel the cringe in forcing yourself to think about positive outcomes… until it does work.
Setting an intention isn’t manifestation, but both constitute a decision to add rather than remove.
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Have you heard of the term revenge bedtime procrastination? It describes the phenomenon of delaying sleep on purpose to reclaim a sense of control or me-time after a day that felt owned by others (your boss, your family). It’s not about poor time management. It’s about psychological reactance, or pushing back against constraint. The revenge isn’t against sleep itself, but against a life that feels overly scheduled.
I like to think of today’s oft-criticised behaviour of brain-rotting ourselves into oblivion as revenge decision procrastination1. We consume AI slop, endless TikToks, and badly produced Netflix releases because, unlike things that are good for us—emotional connection, intellectual stimulation and physical wellbeing—everything that rots us requires zero discipline and no fighting against our propensity for laziness.
This is particularly important in the context of how we currently treat ourselves. Self-optimisation culture has taught us to behave like machines. Track, refine, reduce error, maximise output. We compare prices online, measure our health, and multiply dates.
In parallel, I’ve observed an acute fear of failure and rejection in younger generations (Gen Z, Gen Alpha). Since birth, they’ve always been performing for an online audience, yet strangely under-exposed to real-life rejection. I’ve also noticed that for them, lack of attention = rejection.
Experiencing rejection, to a degree, is a positive in my book: once you do, you realise that 1. none of this shit matters and 2. you can almost always redirect and/or try again. The realisation is freeing because it enables you to be bolder and take more risks.
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As with most extremes, the pendulum will inevitably swing back. We’re already seeing a desire to reintroduce whimsy, not as an aesthetic, but as a form of resistance. Excess, embarrassment, play. Exercising free will to the point of absurdity. Smoking cigarettes instead of vaping. In a way, the 2026 is the new 2016 trend is rooted in an overall need for levity, for the last time in recent memory where we cared less about optimising for our social media feeds and made choices rooted in real wants and needs.
In the current debate of AI versus humans, perhaps humans need to remember not to act too much like machines.
Am I putting all of my money on this shift happening in 2026? No.
Optimisation is efficient, measurable, and deeply entrenched in our culture, which makes it resilient.
But I would invest in founders, goods, and services built in quiet opposition to it. Not solutions that promise better discipline or tighter control, but ones that redistribute agency upstream2 so autonomy doesn’t have to be reclaimed at midnight. Businesses that don’t moralise behaviour, but reshape environments. That create conditions for excess, play, and creation to emerge naturally, without framing them as self-improvement.
If optimisation is the dominant logic of the machine age, then anti-optimisation may well be where the next durable human value is created.
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📈 Bullish news
Investors are getting more discerning about AI, looking for companies that will define, and make money from, the next phase of the buildout. Some potential winners: Memory suppliers, Micron Technology, and data storage firms. Potential losers: Cooling companies, AI companies that are not focused on responsible budgeting. "OpenAI is having a code red moment, because (Google) Gemini runs so efficiently on inference."(Axios)
Meta’s outgoing chief AI scientist Yann LeCun is already lining up a €500M raise at a ~€3B valuation for a new startup launching in 2026. (Sifted)
Smartphone maker Nothing launches $5M “community investment round.” The crowdfunder will allow investors to buy shares at the same price as Nothing's $1.3B Series C valuation. (tech.eu) More on Nothing: How Nothing Plans to Become the Go-To Tech Brand for Gen Z Creatives (Vogue).
The new power buyers of the art world? Gen Z women. They’re outspending men, taking bigger risks and supporting more emerging artists. (Hypebae)
Not 100% biz news but:
Don’t look it up: I coined the term.
earlier in the day, earlier in the decision loop
“Revenge decision procrastination” brilliant!
Meilleure newsletter depuis celle de juillet 2025 , j’ai raté ma station de métro