The burn-it-all-down myth

The internet is selling a life of change, but biology isn't buying it

Aug 03, 2026

My socials algorithm is fraught with digital nomads and adventurous souls, stories of families who have uprooted and moved abroad, surfers on their journey to the greatest waves. Somewhere in that stew of journeys are my same stories, filling the algorithm of others who long to leave their daily routines and replace predictable days with their own unbelievable bravery and curiosity.

So I understand the draw to uproot and go seeking.

Quit the job and move abroad. Do the thing that scares you. Throw caution to the wind and call it growth (as though the only meaningful life is one in a perpetual state of disruption). I believed this truth to be quite evident in my own life, guilty of burning it all down a couple of different times in the name of growth and curiosity.

There is a bit of truth in it, but I don’t believe it’s to the extent we are being sold. Novelty can pull us out of our rut, and discomfort can be the soil that creativity grows in. A goal worth chasing often does require a leap into the unknown. But somewhere in the collective embrace of reinvention, we (I) seem to have lost sight of a much older truth: our bodies were never built for constant upheaval.

Turns out, our physiology is built for rhythms and patterns, the kind of predictability that lets a nervous system finally exhale. And when we spend years chasing disruption as a lifestyle rather than an occasional necessity, no amount of adventure fully compensates for what we lose along the way.

It helps to remember that long before we consciously plan a single hour of our day, our physiology has already begun preparing for what comes next. Cortisol begins its rise an hour or two before a habitual wake time, priming the body for alertness before the alarm sounds. The digestive system starts preparing for food based on when it has been fed before, releasing anticipatory signals well ahead of the first bite. Core temperature begins to drop in the evening in anticipation of its regular sleep time, not merely in response to darkness.

None of this is passive machinery in the background. It is active anticipation. Our bodies are constantly trying to forecast the near future based on the recent past. So the more consistent that past has been, the more accurately it can prepare, which means that erratic time zones, inconsistent sleep, and unpredictable meals (hello 11 pm dinner in Lisbon) make it impossible for our body to accurately prepare. A body that no longer knows what to expect spends far more energy than it should just getting through an ordinary day.

Adventure, by its nature, asks the body to improvise constantly.

This is, in essence, the entire premise of circadian biology: rhythm is not a lifestyle preference. It is the operating system beneath everything else, and routine is what allows our body to rest and feel safe. There is a reason so many people who move through the world with unusual clarity and output tend to wear some version of the same outfit each day, eat a nearly identical breakfast, or follow an almost ritualistic sequence before doing anything of importance to them. I used to think it was from lack of imagination or an aversion to variety, but it turns out it is decision-fatigue management, and it works because every single choice, however small, draws from the same limited will of mental energy.

Novel situations drain that well far faster, because there is no precedent to lean on. Every decision has to be constructed from scratch, in real time, under some degree of uncertainty. Routine moves entire categories of decision out of that effortful pile and into one that requires almost no conscious thought at all, which is not boring as much as it is efficient. It frees up bandwidth that genuinely important decisions of a day actually deserve. Steve Jobs is a perfect example of this. He wore the same black turtleneck and jeans every day for decades, famously reasoning that eliminating trivial choices preserved his mental energy for decisions that mattered. Am I suggesting you don the same outfit every day? Heavens no. Please keep your purple velvet button-up in the mix if it brings you joy.

None of this amounts to an argument for a rigid or joyless existence, and it is not a case against ambition, travel, or the occasional leap into the unknown. It is simply a case for recognizing that structure is not the enemy of a meaningful life, but is very often what makes a meaningful life sustainable in the first place.

It is worth noticing that an entire generation seems to be arriving at this same conclusion. Gen Z, raised inside more stimulation and unpredictability than any generation before them, is going analog with film cameras, physical books, flip phones, and handwritten journals. It would be easy to read this as nostalgia, a longing for an era they never lived through, but it looks to me much more like exhaustion.

This is a generational recognition that infinite novelty, infinite choice, infinite stimulation does not actually feel like freedom after enough exposure to it. It feels like static. What looks, from the outside, like a retreat into something old-fashioned may in fact be a return to rhythm, to fewer decisions, to something the body can actually predict.

The move-abroad, burn-it-all-down narrative sells well because it is dramatic, because it photographs beautifully, because it fits neatly into a single satisfying story. Routine does not sell nearly as well, because there is no compelling image to capture in "went to bed at roughly the same time for the fortieth night in a row."

And yet that fortieth night, unremarkable as it looks, is likely doing more for a person's baseline wellbeing than most single leaps of faith ever will. There is room to chase the goals and take the leap when it is genuinely the right one to take. But there is so much more on offer in a return to rhythm.

Consistent sleep and wake times, held even loosely, improve sleep quality far more than any mattress or supplement. The body simply falls asleep faster and wakes up less groggy when it feels safe and isn't guessing at the schedule each night.

Regular mealtimes support steadier blood sugar and digestion, and steadier energy throughout the day as a result. Even mood tends to even out, since a nervous system that isn't constantly recalibrating to new environments and unpredictable inputs has more capacity left over for actually processing how it feels rather than just managing how it's coping.

None of this requires optimization culture or a color-coded schedule. It requires something closer to what Gen Z seems to be reaching for instinctively with fewer inputs, more repetition, a life with enough predictability in it that the body can stop bracing and start, finally, to rest.

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