Your Work Ethic is a Coping Mechanism

I've been trying to work on this idea for a really long time and again these are thinly veile I actually just totally transparent uh autobiographical notes to self. Um but I love this idea. Victor Frankle has this famous quote where he says when a man can't find a deep sense of meaning they distract themselves with pleasure. So Frankle is arguing that a lack of meaning causes people to seek temporary relief in superficial pursuits rather than addressing the underlying existential void. And perhaps for many maybe maybe even most people this is a big issue. But there is another group who suffer with the opposite problem. And this is Frankle's inverse law. When a man can't find a deep sense of pleasure, they distract themselves with meaning. So if ease and grace and joy and playfulness do not come easily to you, one solution is to ignore momentto- moment happiness entirely and just always pursue hard things. You become a world champion at winning the marshmallow test. You convince yourself that delayed gratification in perpetuity is noble because you struggle to ever feel grateful. The TLDDR is that you prioritize meaning over happiness because happiness does not come easily to you. The problem is that delayed gratification in the extreme results in no gratification. Alan Watts has got this idea. If we are unduly absorbed in improving our lives, we may forget altogether to live them. Everyone is taught that on the other side of discomfort is something valuable. We're told that worthwhile things are difficult to attain because if they weren't difficult to attain, they would not be worthwhile. And this is how nonvaluable but difficult things get slipped into our desires without us noticing. Attaining something worthwhile is often going to be difficult. But just because it's difficult does not mean it's worthwhile. Doing something well doesn't make it important. Some people are hyper respponders to that instruction and they go on to become workaholics and insecure overachievers. And from the outside, this looks like you've transcended the shallow need for pleasure. But in reality, it's just cope to avoid facing the fact that you struggle to feel joy. So instead, you perpetually promise yourself that happiness might finally come tomorrow. But like running toward the horizon, tomorrow never arrives. Congratulations, you've managed to subjugate your joy as tribute to your work. Do not mistake humilous and funlacking seriousness with being sophisticated and caring about your pursuit. You took type A advice for type B people and turned it into a [ __ ] religion. Thorough said the price of anything is the amount of life that you exchange for it. And by this logic, many of us are paying into a bank account that we never withdraw from. Permanently winning the marshmallow test results in you never actually arriving at a moment where you cash in your efforts for rewards. And in anticipation, this sounds like building up to some amazingly impressive moment which will make all the pain worth it. But in retrospect, I get the sense that this will just feel like a series of miserable successes where you never stopped to actually enjoy your time on this planet. You need to do at least a bit of what you care about now as opposed to banking on finding time for it in the future. Once the decks are cleared and life's duties are out of the way, life's duties will never be out of the way. And so if you really mean it, when you say that you'd like to write a novel or spend more time with your aging parents or fighting climate change or having fun, at some point you're just going to have to start doing it. That's from Oliver Burkeman. I This is a a suite, I guess, of of challenges that we're talking about today, and a lot of them are in tension with each other, right? this sort of desire for drive whilst realizing that it's a coping mechanism. This uh need for inspiration uh and aspiration whilst also realizing that compassion is something that's important. This understanding that you do need to delay gratification. But if you're the sort of person that takes delay gratification advice to heart, you probably are a hyperresponder and didn't need to hear more of it. you actually need to needed to hear. Maybe you should cash some of that in. But I I think that idea that Frankle's inverse law, when a man can't find a deep sense of pleasure, they distract themselves with meaning. I see in a lot of my friends that they became serious about pursuits and found that meaning was easier to attain than happiness was. Um that working work was easier than play. Actually there's this idea I think about the ancient Greek word for work was translated as not at leisure. So leisure was the set point and work was the aberration and the people who are ruled by Frankle's inverse law see the opposite. They see work as the set point and and leisure as the aberration. And again like letting go of this like [ __ ] like but I have to I want to build the life that I want. And I want to get out of the country or the the [ __ ] culture or the wealth bracket that I've been born into or that I fell into or that I stumbled backward into. I have to create this special kind of monster inside of me in order to be able to do that. And yes, you do. But if you never let go of it, you end up it's like a dose response curve thing, right? This kind of an interesting idea from medicine. Um, some maybe most drugs have a dose response curve. You can see it as kind of a a U like that. Too little and not much happens. The right amount and something happens. Too much and something bad happens. Like the ensuring that if you don't work hard enough, things in your life will not go well. If you work too hard, things in your life will not go well. If you work just about the right amount, things in your life will probably go great. And working out where that line is is the task of the perennial overthinker. The insecure overachiever has to always be asking the question, do I need to put my foot on the gas more or less? And if you find yourself regularly outworking all of the people around you and then not choosing to do it, I think that maybe you should consider just lifting that foot off a little bit. Before we continue, I've been drinking AG1 every day for years now because it's the simplest way that I found to cover my bases and not overthink nutrition. And that is why I've partnered with them. One scoop gives you 75 vitamins, minerals, probiotics, and whole food ingredients in a single drink. 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