# Why Is Modern Life So Exhausting? How Metrics Kill The Thrill Of Winning

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/iflscience-we-have-questions-7025311/why-is-modern-life-so-exhausting-how-metrics-kill-the-thrill-of-winning
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/iflscience-we-have-questions-7025311/why-is-modern-life-so-exhausting-how-metrics-kill-the-thrill-of-winning.md
Podcast: [IFLScience - We Have Questions](https://stenobird.com/podcast/iflscience-we-have-questions-7025311)
Published: 2026-04-02T14:28:40+00:00
Episode link: https://iflsciencewehavequestions.podbean.com/e/why-is-modern-life-so-exhausting-how-metrics-kill-the-thrill-of-winning/
Audio file: https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/hm8zi7jzc88xkibd/WHQ-LifeSoExhausting_Final.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/iflscience-we-have-questions-7025311/episodes/why-is-modern-life-so-exhausting-how-metrics-kill-the-thrill-of-winning
Duration seconds: 3088

## Resource

Modern life is exhausting. If you’re not behind on your emails, then there’s the endless calls that could’ve been an email. Reminders that you haven’t reached this quota, or that element X of your job is slipping behind on its KPIs or rankings. It feels as if the ways we have to lose are endless in a world obsessed with metrics, and yet have you noticed that keeping score is so much fun in games? To understand why point scoring in life can be so draining versus scoring wins in games, I sat down with C Thi Nguyen, philosophy professor at the University of Utah and author of The Score: How To Stop Playing Someone Else’s Game. We dive into how the gamification of life has fundamentally captured our value systems, turning personal life choices into numerical data, and how to return to what’s truly meaningful over what’s easily measured. Join us as we explore all of this and more in this special bumper episode of We Have Questions.

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## Transcript

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