When I’m asked to recommend a Mac laptop for people, Apple’s low-end 14-inch MacBook Pro usually gets lost in the shuffle. It competes with the 13- and 15-inch MacBook Air, significantly cheaper computers that meet or exceed the “good enough” boundary for the vast majority of computer users. The basic MacBook Pro also doesn’t have the benefit of Apple’s Pro or Max-series chips, which come with many more CPU cores, substantially better graphics performance, and higher memory capacity for true professionals and power users.

But the low-end Pro makes sense for a certain type of power user. At $1,599, it’s the cheapest way to get Apple’s best laptop screen, with mini LED technology, a higher 120 Hz ProMotion refresh rate for smoother scrolling and animations, and the optional but lovely nano-texture (read: matte) finish. Unlike the MacBook Air, it comes with a cooling fan, which has historically meant meaningfully better sustained performance and less performance throttling. And it’s also Apple’s cheapest laptop with three Thunderbolt ports, an HDMI port, and an SD card slot, all genuinely useful for people who want to plug lots of things in without having multiple dongles or a bulky dock competing for the Air’s two available ports.

If you don’t find any of those arguments in the basic MacBook Pro’s favor convincing, that’s fine. The new M5 version makes almost no changes to the laptop other than the chip, so it’s unlikely to change your calculus if you already looked at the M3 or M4 version and passed it up. But it is the first Mac to ship with the M5, the first chip in Apple’s fifth-generation chip family and a preview of what’s to come for (almost?) every other Mac in the lineup. So you can at least be interested in the 14-inch MacBook Pro as a showcase for a new processor, if not as a retail product in and of itself.

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Google just announced several updates for its digital telecom provider, Google Fi. It’s introducing AI-enhanced audio for better sound quality during calls. The company says this will ensure “optimized audio quality for every call, so you can confidently take calls from a windy park or busy cafe.” This feature rolls out sometime in November.

Google Fi is getting HD/HD+ calling, which should also improve the overall audio quality. The service will soon automatically connect to Wi-Fi when available, with the company touting “seamless, secure switching.” As for security, each call and text goes through a VPN. There’s no extra cost for this service and it doesn’t count against the pre-existing data allocation.

The platform will also soon let users make calls and send texts from any web browser. This is coming in December and will feature a new interface with full RCS support, allowing folks to add hi-res photos and videos to message threads.

Finally, Google is integrating Gemini into the platform to create an AI-powered billing summary. The company says this offers “simple, easy explanations of all your billing statements.” The feature has been in a beta for a while and Google says users have given it “high positive sentiment.”

These tools are accompanied by a limited-time promo for new subscribers, amounting to 50 percent off for 15 months when bringing in a phone. The discount is only available for the Unlimited Premium and Unlimited Standard plans.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/google-fi-will-start-using-ai-to-make-calls-sound-better-170025805.html?src=rss

Google’s Fi cellular service is getting an upgrade, and since this is 2025, there’s plenty of AI involved. You’ll be able to ask Google AI questions about your bill, and a different variation of AI will improve call quality. AI haters need not despair—there are also some upgrades to connectivity and Fi web features.

As part of this update, a new Gemini-powered chatbot will soon be turned loose on your billing statements. The idea is that you can get bill summaries and ask specific questions of the robot without waiting for a real person. Google claims that testers have had positive experiences with the AI billing bot, so it’s rolling the feature out widely.

Next month, Google also plans to flip the switch on an AI audio enhancement. The new “optimized audio” will use AI to filter out background sounds like wind or crowd noise. If you’re using a Pixel, you already have a similar feature for your end of the call. However, this update will reduce background noise on the other end as well. Google’s MVNO has also added support for HD and HD+ calling on supported connections.

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There was no massive event announcing the M5 MacBook Pro, not even a short promotional video for social media. Instead, Apple dumped all of its new M5 devices on us with a few press releases, a clear sign that there’s not much to celebrate this year. But while the new 14-inch MacBook Pro appears to be more of the same on the surface, it also features an impressive graphics upgrade that makes it a decent choice for gaming. And it retains everything I already love about the MacBook Pros: It’s still a well-designed machine that’s sturdy, fast and offers tons of battery life.

What’s new in the M5 MacBook Pro

The star of the show is Apple’s new M5 chip, which sports a 10-core CPU, 10-core GPU and 16 Neural Engine cores. While the company claims it’s 20 percent faster than the M4 for multi-threaded applications, the biggest upgrade is the GPU, which is up to 60 percent faster when it comes to games and professional apps. The M4 was no slouch when it came to gaming and media rendering, but the M5 is a more tempting upgrade for anyone using an M1 MacBook Pro or older.

Otherwise, it’s like I said: more of the same. There’s the 14.2-inch Liquid Retina XDR display which offers up to 1,000 nits of full-screen brightness and 1,600 nits of HDR, as well as ProMotion’s smooth 120Hz refresh rate. (Unfortunately, we’ll likely have to wait until next year for an OLED option.) The aluminum case is still rock solid, and the excellent keyboard and trackpad haven’t changed a bit. Last year’s 12MP Center Stage webcam also makes a return, along with the superb six-speaker sound system.

The port situation is also solid. On top of the MagSafe 3 charging connection, there are three Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports, a full-sized SDXC card reader, HDMI and a headphone jack. (It would be nice to see a gigabit Ethernet port though. That’s the one accessory I still regularly connect to almost every laptop.)

Devindra Hardawar for Engadget

In use: The best gets even better

Before I get to the benchmarks and other performance metrics, it’s worth pointing out just how pleasant the 14-inch MacBook is to use. Its aluminum frame is smooth to the touch, its screen is bright enough to use in direct sunlight and it always feels blazing fast. While its 3.4-pound frame is noticeably heavier than the 2.7-pound MacBook Air, it’s still easy to travel with. And you can certainly tell that the additional weight translates into raw power, especially as you start to stress the MacBook Pro and hear its fans gently spin up. While the MacBook Air is built to be as thin as possible, the MacBook Pro is built to get work done (and look good while doing so).

Based on my testing with popular benchmarks and a few games, the M5 MacBook Pro is noticeably faster than the M4 model in tasks that rely on the GPU and NPU. Otherwise, though, it’s hard to tell a difference when it comes to basic tasks like booting into macOS, browsing the web and dealing with email. My review unit was equipped with 32GB of RAM, so it had a bit more breathing room than the base model with 16GB of memory. (Pro tip: If you’re planning to keep the MacBook Pro for four years or more, it makes sense to get at least 32GB of RAM. You can’t upgrade the memory down the line like older laptops, since it’s baked directly into the M5 chip.)

In Geekbench 6, the M5 MacBook Pro was around 500 points faster than the M4 model in single-threaded tasks, and nearly 3,500 points faster for complex multi-threaded work like video rendering. Thanks to the M5’s new graphics hardware, it also tested far better in the Geekbench 6 GPU test, reaching around 11,00 points faster than the M4. I noticed a similar result in Cinebench 2024: The M5 MacBook Pro’s CPU scores were slightly better than before, but the GPU score was nearly twice as fast as the M4.

For real-world gaming performance, I turned to Lies of P, which also surprised me with some major leaps. With the M4 MacBook Pro, I could only get a steady 60 fps with the highest graphics settings in 1080p. With this M5 model, I was able to play at the highest resolution (3024 by 1890) between 70 and 75 fps. It was even smoother as I scaled down the resolution: The MacBook Pro hit 85 to 95 fps in 1,440p and up to 140 fps in 1080p. Those results are in line with what I’d expect from a gaming notebook that costs well over $2,000, which is in line with the $2,200 retail cost of our review unit.

Devindra Hardawar for Engadget

I still wouldn’t recommend a MacBook Pro for anyone who wants to play tons of games, but it’s heartening to see Apple making progress on that front. There are more new AAA games hitting the app store, and the M-series chips are fast enough to run most of them well. But the M5 is the first time I’d consider Apple’s hardware equivalent to a PC running a video card like NVIDIA’s RTX 5070.

The M5 MacBook Pro retains the impressive battery life from the previous model, reaching 34 hours and 30 minutes while looping an HD video. I could also use it for more than two full days of work with nothing much stressing the GPU. And once again, the MacBook Pro never feels very hot, even under an intensive workload. The fans are audible, but they don’t get as annoying as the helicopter-like fans from the old Intel MacBook Pros.

Devindra Hardawar for Engadget

Should you buy the M5 MacBook Pro?

If you’re looking for a powerful laptop that can handle most heavy-duty workloads, the MacBook Pro will certainly suit your needs. But the difficult choice now is deciding between this 14-inch M5 model, the existing M4 Pro and Max systems, or waiting a few months for the upcoming M5 Pro and M5 Max chips. If you’re rendering video and 3D content all day, you’re likely better off working with Pro and Max chips, but you’ll have to wait several months to see the new M5 options. If you absolutely need a workhorse MacBook Pro today, you’ll have to settle for the M4 Pro and M4 Max (which are still far faster than the base M5 chip). But for most creatives, the M5 MacBook Pro offers an impressive balance of power and portability.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/laptops/apple-macbook-pro-m5-14-inch-review-a-huge-graphics-upgrade-for-creators-and-gamers-170009179.html?src=rss

If you’re on the go a lot, a power bank is practically a backpack essential, and while a chunkier device is sometimes necessary for power users, if you just need something to juice up your phone you can easily stay within the realms of pocketability. Baseus’ Picogo 5K belongs to the latter category, and right now you can pick one up for $36, which is a record low price.

While this particular accessory only made it into the “others we tested” section in our guide to the best MagSafe power banks for iPhone, that’s only because it was slightly beaten in the slimness department by the Anker Nano. However, as we noted in the guide, the Nano doesn’t have a stand, and the Picogo 5K does, so if you like to be able to prop up your phone while it’s charging, it might be the better pick for you.

As you can probably guess from its name, Baseus’ power bank has a 5,000mAh capacity and is Qi2-certified. In our testing. It gave our tester iPhone 15 a 43 percent bump in battery in 42 minutes, which returned the phone to 91 percent. It has a curved design and is wrapped in soft silicone, making it easy to grip in a pinch.

As a reminder, MagSafe charging is supported on iPhone 12 models and later, though you’ll need an iPhone 13 or later to reach the 15W charging speed on a third-party Qi2 accessory such as the one featured in this deal.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on X for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/this-baseus-magnetic-power-bank-is-cheaper-than-ever-at-only-36-164814402.html?src=rss

Apple lashed out at the European Union’s attempts to tame the power of Silicon Valley in the most far-reaching legal challenge of the bloc’s Big Tech antitrust rules. From a report: The iPhone maker’s lawyer Daniel Beard told the General Court in Luxembourg on Tuesday that the Digital Markets Act “imposes hugely onerous and intrusive burdens” at odds with Apple’s rights in the EU marketplace.

The DMA came onto the EU’s books in 2023 and is designed to clip the wings of the world’s largest technology platforms with a slew of dos and don’ts. But over recent months, the law has also drawn the ire of US President Donald Trump and plagued EU-US trade talks. Apple — seen as the biggest renegade against the EU’s crackdown — challenged the law on three fronts: EU obligations to make rival hardware work with its iPhone, the regulator’s decision to drag the hugely profitable App Store under the rules, and a decision to probe whether iMessage should have faced the rules, which it later escaped.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Aura just announced the Ink, a 13-inch color e-ink photo frame. The company says it’s the “thinnest e-paper frame available” that is “designed to join a gallery wall or stand alone.” Aura isn’t kidding here. This thing is just 0.6-inches thick.

One of the primary pain points of traditional digital photo frames is that many require constant power via an outlet. This creates an aesthetic problem, as one has to figure out a place to tuck away a power cord. Some modern frames operate via battery, but they don’t last all that long.

The Aura Ink, however, features a rechargeable battery that powers the device for three full months. That’s a really good metric and is likely due to the decreased power demands of e-ink.

There’s another problem that Aura looks to have solved here. Color e-paper has a limited palette with access to just six different hues. That’s just the nature of the technology. This doesn’t always make for the most pristine images.

The company is getting around this limitation via a proprietary dithering algorithm that “expands the appearance of the display’s six-color ink system into millions of tones, creating the illusion of full-color photographs.” I haven’t gotten a look at this frame in real life, but the marketing images look gorgeous.

Aura

There’s also an integrated front light that highlights photos. The company says this light has been designed to boost contract and automatically adjusts to ambient conditions. It also shuts off at night because the opposite would be kind of creepy.

The Aura Ink ships with a wall-mount and a tabletop stand. Now onto the bad news. This is high-end technology with a high-end price tag. The frame costs $500. Aura is a reputable company, however, as its Carver Mat model topped our list of the best digital picture frames. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/home/aura-just-announced-an-incredibly-thin-color-e-ink-photo-frame-163734237.html?src=rss

It’s now more expensive than ever to stream shows like House of the Dragon and Hacks. On Tuesday, Oct. 21, Warner Bros. Discovery announced that all HBO Max subscription prices will increase, effective immediately. In fact, for some plans, it is now more expensive to subscribe to HBO Max than it is to subscribe to Netflix.

Here’s the deal: Prices are going up across all three of HBO Max’s subscription tiers. That includes the following:

• HBO Max Basic With Ads: $10.99 per month (was $9.99 per month), or $109.99 per year (was $99.99 per year)

• HBO Max Standard: $18.49 per month (was $16.99 per month), or $184.99 per year (was $169.99 per year)

• HBO Max Premium: $22.99 per month (was $20.99 per month), or $229.99 per year (was $209.99 per year)

These price points are now in effect for all new subscribers. Current monthly subscribers will be notified of the price hike, and will see increases on their next billing cycle, on or after Nov. 20, 2025. Similarly, annual subscribers will not see a price increase until their plans are up for renewal. If you signed up for an annual Premium subscription yesterday, for example, you’re locked into that $209.99 price until next year. If your annual Premium plan renews next month, however, you’ll be charged that extra $20.

This is, of course, the most expensive HBO Max has ever cost, and will be especially felt by any subscribers that pay for extra member accounts. In fact, HBO Max Basic With Ads and HBO Max Standard now costs more than Netflix with Ads and Netflix Standard, by quite a bit. Netflix with Ads is only $7.99 at this time, while Netflix Standard is $17.99. It costs $.50 more to subscribe to HBO Max Standard than Netflix Standard, and $3 more to subscribe to deal with HBO’s ads over Netflix’s. The only edge HBO Max still has is in the Premium category, as Netflix charges $24.99 for the privilege of 4K content with four concurrent streams at once.

If you’re looking at these price points, and are committed to only one streaming service at a time, you might be convinced to take the Netflix route. As such, Warner Bros. Discovery might be banking on the demand for its content over the dollar and cents here: Between series like The Last of Us, The Gilded Age, The Penguin, and The White Lotus, and content like Weapons and Peacemaker, HBO Max is host to some of the most talked-about shows. Maybe that will convince people to stick with the service even through these price hikes, especially as the Game of Thrones spinoff A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is on the horizon.

On Monday afternoon, Amazon confirmed that an outage affecting Amazon Web Services’ cloud hosting, which had impacted millions across the Internet, had been resolved.

Considered the worst outage since last year’s CrowdStrike chaos, Amazon’s outage caused “global turmoil,” Reuters reported. AWS is the world’s largest cloud provider and, therefore, the “backbone of much of the Internet,” ZDNet noted. Ultimately, more than 28 AWS services were disrupted, causing perhaps billions in damages, one analyst estimated for CNN.

Popular apps like Snapchat, Signal, and Reddit went dark. Flights got delayed. Banks and financial services went down. Massive games like Fortnite could not be accessed. Some of Amazon’s own services were hit, too, including its e-commerce platform, Alexa, and Prime Video. Ultimately, millions of businesses simply stopped operating, unable to log employees into their systems or accept payments for their goods.

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London police finally understand why 80,000 phones disappeared from the city’s streets last year. The answer involves budget cuts [non-paywalled source] that hollowed out British policing in the 2010s, the arrival of electric bikes that made theft easy, and a lucrative black market in China where stolen British phones retain full functionality. The Metropolitan Police discovered an industrial-scale operation in December when officers traced a woman’s iPhone to a Heathrow warehouse on Christmas Eve. Boxes labeled as batteries and bound for Hong Kong contained almost 1,000 stolen iPhones. The police arrested two men in their thirties in September as suspected ringleaders of a group that sent up to 40,000 stolen phones to China.

The epidemic took root after Conservative-led austerity measures reduced police numbers and budgets. In 2017 the Metropolitan Police announced it would stop investigating low-level crimes to focus resources on serious violence and sexual offenses. Thieves on rented electric bikes began mounting sidewalks to snatch phones at high speed while wearing balaclavas and hoods. Police data shows only 495 people were charged out of 106,000 phones reported stolen between March 2024 and February 2025. Thieves earn up to $401 per device. The phones sell for up to $5,000 in China because Chinese network providers do not subscribe to the international blacklist for stolen devices.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Since its release 2023, the Boox Palma e-reader—and its successor, the Palma 2—has sown confusion. It’s the same size and shape as a cell phone and it has an e-ink screen, but it isn’t an e-ink phone, because it doesn’t have a SIM card slot or eSIM. Well, today Boox’s parent company, the Chinese device-maker Onyx International, announced the new Palma 2 Pro, and things aren’t getting any less opaque.

As I wrote about last month when the new device was first rumored, the Palma 2 Pro does have a SIM card slot, but it still isn’t really a phone—while it can handle mobile data (meaning browsing the internet, streaming video, reading email, or downloading books and other media), it still can’t take calls like a traditional Android phone. (You can download a voice-over-internet app like Google Voice or WhatsApp, but that’s not really the same thing.)

That said, the Palma 2 Pro does offer a few choice upgrades worth discussing—as does the Boox Note Air 5C, the next in the company’s line of full-fledged color e-ink notebooks.

The Palma 2 Pro adds a color screen and stylus support

If calling capability was the most-requested Palma feature on the Boox subreddit, then a color screen and support for note-taking were tied for second, and the new Palma will have both, turning it into a mini digital notebook along the lines of the reMarkable Paper Pro Move.

In its announcement video, Boox revealed that the device will add the same Kaleido 3 color e-ink technology found on the Boox Go Color 7 (Gen II) released last year, and like that device, it will also support writing on the screen. While the Go Color 7 could be purchased with Boox’s own “InkSense” stylus—a USI 2.0 pen that I found rather disappointing when I tested it last year—a Boox spokesperson promised an improved writing experience from the Palma 2 Pro’s “InkSense Pro.” (Given my mixed reaction to USI 2.0 styluses across other devices I’ve tested, I’m withholding judgment there.)

While those are the headline changes, the Palma 2 Pro offers a few decent if not dramatic upgrades (which is probably why the company isn’t calling it the Palma 3). It’s still available in either black or white, but it runs on Android 15 (versus the Palma 2’s Android 13), and has 8GB or RAM over the Palma 2’s 6GB. Otherwise, it has the same basic form factor (the new device is .8mm thicker and 5g heavier) and features (including a 16 megapixel rear camera, 128GB of storage, an adjustable front light, and fingerprint unlock), but it still isn’t fully waterproof.

A big price increase

All those upgrades do come at a significant cost—the Palma 2 Pro retails for $399.99 in the U.S., a full $100 more than the already-pricey-for-an-ereader Palma 2. It’s unclear how much of the price increase can be chalked up to tariffs on Chinese-made products, but for what it’s worth, the device will be sold for $20 less in other parts of the world.

The Palma 2 Pro is available for pre-order now on Boox’s website, with a scheduled ship date of Nov. 7.

The Boox Note Air 5C is a less dramatic upgrade

The Palma 2 Pro wasn’t the only product Boox announced today. The U.S. is also getting the next iteration of the Boox Note Air, though its far less flashy an upgrade. In fact, that features and specs listed on the Boox product page are a virtual copy of those for the Note Air 4C released in 2024. It has the same look and form factor (to within 1mm, according to the specs on the Boox website), the same Kaleido 3 color screen, the same 6GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, and virtually the same weight.

Aside from a similar upgrade from Android 13 to Android 15 for the OS, the biggest difference seems to be the addition of pogo pins to support for Boox’s new magnetic keyboard cover, which turns the device into something resembling an e-ink laptop. (Boox also makes a keyboard cover for its larger Note Max and Tab X C tablets, and I’ve been pretty pleased with it.) It also comes packaged with an upgraded Boox Pen3 stylus, which I’ve yet to try out.

The same price as the Note Air 4C

Befitting the minimal upgrades, the price for the Note Air 5C remains $530 in the U.S., the same as last year’s model, and you can already order it on Amazon.

A good time for discounts on older Boox devices

Boox Palma 2

$299.99
at Amazon

$299.99
at Amazon

Boox Note Air 4C

$499.99
at Amazon

$529.99
Save $30.00

$499.99
at Amazon

$529.99
Save $30.00

To be honest, these new product announcements aren’t exactly what I was hoping for. The Note Air 5C is barely an upgrade, and given how successful it has been in helping me reduce my use of enraging and addictive social media apps, I really would love it if the Palma could replace my phone. Moreover, I don’t find the addition of a color screen that compelling, since color e-ink makes black-and-white material look worse, and I think the Palma’s 6.13-inch screen is too small to write on comfortably (even the 7.3-inch reMarkable Paper Pro Move is pushing it in that regard).

On the plus side, the launch of new models does mean decent discounts on the older versions: You can now pick up the Palma 2 for $270, $30 less than the previous price and the same low it hit during recent Prime Day sales. Meanwhile, the Note Air 4C is $500, a $30 price cut.

The phrase “get ready with me!” sends shivers down my spine. Somewhere between the gratitude journal and the seventh supplement of the morning, “wellness” stopped being a refuge and became another item on an impossible to-do list. And when I don’t accomplish the items on my to-do list, I’ve introduced a new way to feel failure in my daily life. I’m burning out trying to prevent burnout; I’m anxious about not doing enough anxiety-reducing practices; I’m tired from all my “energy-boosting” protocols. All the self-care that’s supposed to leave me “restored” is utterly depleting me. I’ve reached a paradox of wellness culture, and I can’t be alone. 

The surveillance state of self-care

Emily Austen, author of Smarter: 10 Lessons for a More Productive and Less Stressed Life, has witnessed this transformation firsthand. She describes how wellness has morphed into “the new productivity theatre,” where people find themselves “drowning in self-improvement checklists: journaling, breathwork, 10k steps, meditation, supplements, skincare, and still logging on exhausted.” Wellness culture is its own kind of performance, with its own set of costumes.

What’s particularly insidious is how self-care has been co-opted into another metric of success. Austen points out that it “has turned into another form of self-surveillance: something we perform, post, and measure.” We’re not just tracking our steps and sleep cycles for ourselves—we’re curating proof of our wellness for an audience, real or imagined.

And here’s where we reach the paradox of self-care. We know the hustle culture is broken, yet we’re sold wellness as the solution…through more hustle. Brands capitalize on our exhaustion, selling hope in the form of adaptogens and morning routines, promising relief for our “fried nervous systems.”

Whether or not you’d call your nervous system “fried,” the majority of us feel burnt out in one way or another. And as Austen reminds us, most of us “do not have the luxury of taking six months off to recover.” The systems we build need to work alongside our actual lives, not in some idealized version of them. Otherwise, they’re just expensive bandages on a wound that needs stitches.

The myth of the perfect routine

Alexis Haselberger, a time management and productivity coach, encounters this wellness mythology constantly in her practice. There’s a pervasive belief that “self-care is a set of activities (yoga, meditation, morning pages, etc.) and if you’re not doing them, you’re not taking care of yourself.”

She recalls a client who, after a time-tracking exercise, concluded he wasn’t drinking enough water. Her response? “How do you know?” The ensuing conversation revealed the absurdity of following arbitrary rules—like the famous eight glasses of water—without checking in with your actual body. “Are you feeling dehydrated? Is your pee dark yellow? Are you thirsty all the time? No? Well, your water intake is probably just fine.”

Even more telling is the phenomenon of people fighting their natural chronotype, trying to become morning people just to squeeze in wellness rituals before work. Haselberger sees “many, many people” attempting this transformation, chasing the Instagram-worthy 5 a.m. routine when their bodies are wired for different rhythms entirely.

How did we arrive at this exhausting place? Haselberger blames “a dystopian content machine” flooding us with claims that one more wellness activity will make all the difference. “People are already stressed, so they’re searching for the magic bullet.”

Instead, real self-care is often about subtracting, not adding. “No bubble bath or journaling session is going to solve burnout,” Haselberger says. Rather, it’s about removing what doesn’t serve you, not piling on more obligations. Focus on protecting your boundaries, curating your environment, and knowing when to quit.

The simplest solution

Katherine Morgan Schafler, therapist and author of The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control, offers a way out of this trap: simplicity and sustainability. Before adopting any wellness practice, ask yourself two questions: Is it simple? Is it sustainable?

Take exercise as an example. Instead of committing to a complex gym routine, could you take a walk? Do jumping jacks in your living room? Schafler suggests asking what you could see yourself doing “for the rest of your life,” not what you could white-knuckle through for six months in an “unsustainable burst that leads to burn out.”

And here’s the permission slip we all need: “You’re supposed to do this thing called ‘enjoying your life.'” Fun and enjoyment aren’t frivolous—they’re essential to mental wellness. “Formal wellness routines that take themselves too seriously and are devoid of fun might not be helpful for you,” Schafler says. “Trust what feels good; if you’re not enjoying it on some level, don’t do it.”

Perhaps the most radical act of self-care isn’t adding another supplement to your morning stack or waking up earlier for meditation. Maybe it’s permission to do less. Trust your body over influencer advice, protect your time instead of optimizing it, and choose actual rest over the performance of rest.

Wellness should restore, not deplete. If your self-care routine feels like another job, it’s not care—it’s compliance. And you’re allowed to quit.