There’s a concept in the food world, “bliss point,” that refers to the perfect balance of salt, sugar, and fat to make a food optimal (usually in the sense that people can’t stop eating it).

The idea here isn’t to create the “perfect food,” but rather to maximize the satisfaction experienced by the person who’s eating it.

So while there are countless ways to define “best” when it comes to food (including but not limited to cost, creativity, and authenticity), this metric is measuring the response of the food-eater, not the food itself. And the preferred unit of said measurement is how much the consumer wants more of said food because the experience is just so good that it’s difficult to stop.

This concept was originally of interest to the US Army, which wanted to ensure soldiers were receiving rations that encouraged them to eat enough calories each day, but it was more fully embraced when it was brought over to the Big Food world, where major food conglomerates started tweaking their product formulae to hook their customers, rather than just appeal to them.

It’s of course possible to abuse this sort of research: dark patterns built into digital interfaces are arguably similar, as they nudge us toward doing things that are good for someone else (often companies trying to sell us stuff), but not for us.

It can be useful to think in similar terms when considering how to rebalance one’s habits, relationships, and work, though, as it can be productive to view aspects of our lives through a lens that considers not just multiple metrics, but the balance of those metrics and our response to their agglomerated totality. Not just work, not just environment and rituals—everything added together.

I would argue that it’s ideal to use something like eudaemonia (or some other measure of deep fulfillment) as one of the gauges we watch, too, rather than fixating exclusively on more superficial versions of enjoyment and pleasure. Otherwise it’s possible to balance our habits, spending, and indulgences really well, but only for short-term benefit, never considering the impact such near-sightedness might have on our older selves.

That, in turn, could lead us along dark pattern-like paths: our lifetime of earnest efforts ultimately plunking us down into a context that’s maybe kind of nice, but which never profoundly gratifies.

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