The internet discovered you can maximize how many maximizing trends you're doing — thus maximizing your max across the maximum possible number of things. And nobody can explain why, but here we are.
It started, as most things do, with someone taking an existing trend too far — and then someone else taking that too far, and then someone screenshotting the whole thing.
By now you've heard of rawdogging your morning. You've heard of monk-maxing, looksmaxing, sleepmaxing, proteinmaxing, and seventeen other disciplines that end in "-maxing" and promise to turn you into a person who has their life together.
MaxMaxing is the logical conclusion. Instead of picking one thing to maximize, you maximize your participation in maximizing trends. You track the number of maxes you're actively max-ing. You max your max-stack. You become, in the parlance of its practitioners, fully stacked at the max.
"I'm currently doing 14 different maxing protocols. Is that a lot? I genuinely don't know anymore. My spreadsheet has a spreadsheet."
— anonymous, r/MaxMaxing, 47k upvotesEvery MaxMaxer has their own stack, but the most-cited starter pack — the "minimum viable max," in community speak — contains six core disciplines. You can add more. You are encouraged to add more. The whole point is to add more.
No one is measuring this officially, which is itself a very normal sign of a healthy trend ecosystem.
Here is a thing that is true about MaxMaxing: it is completely ridiculous. Here is another thing that is also true: it is a deeply human response to optimization culture eating its own tail.
At some point, the internet noticed it was telling you to maximize everything — your sleep, your gains, your morning, your mindset, your skin, your social battery, your circadian rhythm, your protein, your deep work windows — and someone decided the correct response was not to do fewer of these things but to maximize the number of these things you are maximizing.
Is it satire? Sincere? Both? The answer, almost certainly, is that it stopped mattering around the third spreadsheet tab.
The barrier to entry is genuinely zero. That's the beauty of it. You are almost certainly already MaxMaxing and just don't know it yet.
Inventory Your Maxes Write down every optimization trend you currently participate in. Include the ones you do "sort of." Especially include the ones you do "sort of."
Count Them This is your baseline MaxMax score. Three to five is a casual MaxMaxer. Eight to twelve is committed. Fourteen or above and you should probably start a newsletter.
Identify The Gaps What maxing trends are you not doing? This is where the growth is. Jawmaxing? Watermaxing? Breathingmaxing? Yes, that one exists. It's called "breathwork" when you're being serious about it.
Add One More Always be adding. The goal is not a number. The goal is that the number is always going up. This is MaxMaxing at its purest.
Post Your Stack The community validates the count. Someone will tell you that what you're calling "Sunlightmaxing" and "Vitamin Dmaxing" are the same thing. They are not. Defend your stack.
The leaderboard is informal and contested. Several users claim scores that the community considers "fraudulent maxes." The debates are long and earnest.
MaxMaxing will peak, get a think-piece in a magazine that doesn't fully understand it, briefly become a brand activation for a protein supplement company, and then quietly become just another thing that some people do with sincerity while other people do ironically while actually kind of meaning it.
In the meantime: count your maxes. Stack your disciplines. The number should always be going up. There is no finish line. There is only more max.
You are already maxing. You just need to max that you're maxing it.
"The goal of MaxMaxing isn't to be maximized. It's to always have one more thing to maximize. The stack is the journey. The journey is the stack."
— someone, probably, in a thread somewhere, currently at 11 maxes and climbing