50,000 Words, 150 Subscribers, and The Burnout Question
From the cell to the soul
Recently, unbeknownst to me, I crossed a rather significant threshold - 50,000 words (59,067 to be exact), written in relative obscurity, for a community of 150 readers who are curious about how people, place, and work form the recipe for whole human health (or sickness).
For bookwormian reference, that’s more than Peter Thiel’s Zero to One, Boyd Varty’s . The Lion Trackers Guide to Life, and Phil Stutz’s Lessons for Living. And so it’s high time I convert what I’ve written here into my first printed book. I need to understand how the publishing industry works (non-fiction) when you’re audience is relatively small (no predictable pop).
Across my current channels - Substack, Instagram, and LinkedIn, I make a monthly impression to the tune of 5-7,000. Not nothing. Not exactly something. To self-publish or to sell? On this mythic quest I’m going to add new mediums (audio and video) and new channels (Spotify), in an attempt to open-source the process.
The book is tentatively titled People, Place, and Work: Whole Human Health in a Time of Madness, and will be in the 200-250 page range in hard-back. Gloss, I do believe, with a felt strip along the spine. It might look something like this.
Or this.
Or this.
In some ways - in the best way possible - the book became obvious over time. Like a statue revealed form marble, it was born whole and was widdled away over time, in the warm and welcoming bowels of Catapult coffehouse.
I’d sit, every morning at the open, and write about what I was experiencing around me. Every essay gravitated back towards the question of whole human health, and the conclusion of almost every one was the cosmic combination of people, place, and work.
Micro-themes within the macro-theme would reveal themselves over time, and wouldn’t let me go. Energy was one of those themes and I wrote about it here, and here. This essay is also about energy, why nobody seems to have any, and what we can do about that.
I hope you’ll follow the journey, and I hope you’ll start writing for your own small community - putting pen to paper on the things that are meaningful to you. A fellow inkfinger, to whom the process means more than the result.
Make sure you’re subscribed here, and you won’t miss a thing.
Onward.
It’s worth discussing whether the era of scientism has left us materially rich, and spiritually poor. I know these discussions - at times - can be exhausting or pretentious, or both. I hope this won’t be that.
Not to be confused with actual science - which is a lovely idea - the idea of being less wrong over time, scientism says I don’t believe anything unless you can prove it to me, and if you can’t prove it to me it isn’t valuable. It makes us obsessed with hacks and tactics, makes us believe a strange delusion that we have more time than we actually have, and that we can do more than we can actually do. It’s the infinite to-do-list, and please-God-not-another-piece-of-project-management-software.
It occurred to me recently that perhaps it’s this blind commitment to proof that so often causes us to miss the point entirely. Observations in controlled settings often offer us next to nothing useful about how the world actually works, and how people behave in that world of infinite mystery. In any controlled laboratory setting, crack a window or run the experiment under full-spectrum sunlight and you’re bound to get a completely different result. It begs the question then (does it not?) - what world exactly are we testing for?
I apologize to Howard Gardner in advance, for I found his book Multiple Intelligences as bordering on useless. Who am I to judge? 200,000 copies sold. Eminent scholar! Fanfare!
“Quips are no substitute for scholarship. I devoted the better part of a year to reviewing the evidence for and against a spiritual intelligence.” - Gardner
It’s not that I didn’t find the premise useful. That there are multiple different kinds of human intelligence, and each of those in turn contributes something wonderful to our Great Human Society. But I can’t help but wonder if all of this research in the ivory tower counts for little in the real world of thinking, feeling, seeking humans. I would take 1 Stutz for every 12 Gardners.
“…you can’t prove these things. My response to the request for proof is to tell clients to act as if it all has meaning, and it will. Real magic is collective magic.” - Stutz
Andrew Huberman is one of those data driven darlings, and although I - perhaps rather abrasively - said the beta is unbearable, I think Andrew is a good man and I’ve found one idea of his particularly useful. It’s quite a good idea actually. The idea that energy and identity are two fundamental driving forces of the human experience. As far as I can tell, he’s right, and it’s a framework that just won’t let me be. That’s how you know it’s a good idea.
It’s a good idea because most of us modern, mischievous mammals misunderstand what he’s actually talking about. When he says energy, he means energy from the cell to the soul.
“We often forget the body is, essentially, organized information. And information is energy.” - Dr. Joe Dispenza
The former, the literal, physical energy we are able to generate in our body - through mitochondria and bodily processes that are functioning properly. Clearly, with the rise of auto-immunity, chronic illness, and infertility, our cellular power stations are not functioning correctly. One of the more obvious clues is the rather remarkable revelation that the core temperature of human bodies is going down - we can’t seem to generate our own internal heat (energy) and that seems to be causing a host of problems.
The latter, also biochemical, but generated from somewhere else - from the gut, or the brain - whichever you like. The sense of muster and get-up-and-go that you’ve seen from people you perceive as high energy. These people seemed to be pulled to the day, rather than having to be pushed toward it. By some cosmic force, sense of purpose, and connection to people, place, and work.
Identity is directly tied to energy because the people who display the most physical energy also tend to be the most enthusiastic and excited about the day mentally and spiritually.
In the final piece of the Timelessness Trilogy, I embedded a photo of the Life Force pyramid. It’s a Phil Stutz framework that is deeply tied to the amount of physical and spiritual energy we can manifest throughout our lives. Physical energy goes down over time (inevitably), but we can directly compensate for that decline over time with an increase in spiritual energy that we bring about ourselves.
A key point to note here is that although we might feel like we do, we don’t bring about this energy alone. This kind of life force is only possible in collaboration with other beings. Co-creation - never in a vacuum.
“Where your attention goes, your life goes, and if you are constantly putting your attention on living things, there's more aliveness in your own life.” - Boyd Varty
People give us energy because we draw off of the collective energy of the group. A band of humans all rowing in the same direction is as intoxicating to us as anything else in nature. It’s simultaneously responsible for the wisdom and the madness of crowds. It’s why we build companies, clubs, and collectives.
Place gives us energy because the place itself is brimming with life that we are not responsible for and can’t control. It moves forward every second of every day, and does it all on its own thank you very much. What Craig Mod would call “…A landscape of abundant fecundity.” (As it turns out he really likes that word).
Work gives us energy because productive puttering on behalf of the whole is meaningful, and we need meaning in a way that we don’t totally understand. Work is a remarkable vehicle for meaning.
This podcast - an ode to long-form - is a very good place to start understanding the energy and identity complex - including a fascinating look into the old Hungarian school of psychology.
“In a world of process, there is no final step. It’s an infinite universe, and the best you can do is keep up with the universe through constant work.” - Phil Stutz
All we need is a point of view, a set of tools, and a lot of time.
I hope that in this post you learn the 3 unavoidable domains of life, and combine them with the 3 key forms of discipline to unlock energy, and to use it to forge your identity and do your work.
Here are 5 Tools used in this post.
True and False Magic - from the penultimate Phil Stutz and the wonderful Elise Loehnen
Zero to One - notes on the future from the ever thoughtful Peter Thiel
Steven Pressfield’s thoughts on the Muse - from The War of Art
Are you interested in getting access to all of the tools used in every post on People & Place? Let me know in the comments and I’ll build something new and interesting for this community.
Three Unavoidable Domains, Three Kinds of Discipline
I introduced True and False Magic in the last post on People & Place. It was the third head of the Timelessness Trilogy. For some reason things - both good and bad things - happen in threes. There are even rules of three.
“Unlike a binary or twosome, where you are set up in opposition to something else, often in conflict, three has a different energy - an energy that sets everything in motion.” - Stutz
According to Phil Stutz, life comes with three unavoidable domains - pain, uncertainty, and constant work. You can run from that fact, and close, or you can accept it, and stay open to encounter by, and of, the rest of the world.
Domain 3 is the domain of constant work. Because our ideas of work are so warped, modern humans recoil in terror at this. But work, in it’s truest sense, is the “…ability to access higher forces.” The antidote to stuckness is makeness.
If you’re feeling unable to move forward, take the smallest step you can towards creating something with and for other people. In this way, you’ve taken the first step toward your work, and to the acceptance of Domain 3. Inevitably, with a small step, you find the first track, and the next first track, and the next first track, until - before you know it - essays have become a book. That’s equally true philosophically as it is literally. Your work begins to a coalesce into a whole, but only if you can first live in what Stutz calls the world of small things.
“Creativity can only thrive when the ultimate value is process, not results.” - Stutz
If we focus on the process as an end in and of itself, we can not only create but maintain the energy that we need to continue moving forward. To stay on the bus. To the intuition that commitment tunes us into the world around us in the same way that closing ourselves off personally closes us off to what’s possible relationally.
“Constant work is necessary so that you can continue to see reality.” - Stutz
It’s key to note here that the result of your work is entirely beside the point (at least right now).
“It only matters if you carry yourself in forward motion. The development of your will, and your commitment not to allow…inaction is a huge win.” - Stutz
Modern burnout and exhaustion, I would argue, is the opposite of creativity because it’s only possible if you’re out of relationship in some way. You might feel yourself wanting to disagree here - let me try my hand at an explanation.
Let’s say you’re working a job that you enjoy, for the most part. You’re in a moment of hard work - a stressful period. A sprint. You’re feeling like it’s impossible to create any actual space in the day for deep work because - soup to nuts - the day is filled with frantic doing. You can never get outside of task-rabbit mode and it’s leading to burn out, both physically and mentally (although the separation of mind and body is a useless venture). You’re so exhausted you - for some reason - need everyone else to know about it so you post Instagram stories about margaritas and slamming laptops shut. You can’t help but tell other people how busy you are. What that really is is a cry for help. It’s desperation. Nobody thinks this is impressive, but you do it anyway because you subconsciously think that if you tell someone else about it perhaps they’ll throw you a life-line or you’ll get some relief from it.
The point here is that your love for the work and the people doing it doesn’t prohibit burnout and exhaustion if you can’t manage the day, and you’re doing the work for reasons that even you yourself don’t even recognize. Money and status are examples. Money and status take you out of the process, and if you lose the process you lose balance.
“What you view as success can give you a lot of stuff, but what it can’t give you is what everyone wants, which is a sense of meaning. This can only come when you’re in partnership with higher forces.” - Stutz
When someone combines their identity with the rewards of the material world, energy starts to disappear like a dying battery. I have no idea why this is true, but it is true. You’ve felt it. In this way, we discover that “…Burnout comes from seeking some kind of validation or reward…”
Energy, on the other hand, actually increases with “…a sense of responsibility within a greater whole.” When the work feels uniquely like your own, seasons of hard work don’t feel daunting or stressful - they can actually give you energy.
“When you are using group energy, or the energy that comes from working with higher forces, it feels limitless, and conversely, endlessly energizing. This type of work gives you energy.” - Stutz
Every time I’ve felt removed from other people, or find myself in a moment where group energy drains me, it’s because I’m caught up in what’s in it for me. I’m thinking of my role in the work, my ideas getting their moment in the sun, and my recognition when the project eventually comes to life. Ultimate power (the good kind) comes from an acceptance that you’re a tiny piece of a much greater whole. If you can do that, group energy literally pushes you upward and outward, and you can do work that means something.
“You can only access higher forces when you recognize you’re engaged in a process and not working toward a singular achievement…you worship process and view singular achievement achievement as nothing. When you’re in a process, the work itself gives you energy…the only thing that can be a ‘success’ is a process.” - Stutz
When we make the fateful decision to step off the bus, because we feel like we don’t have an ounce of energy left, we intuitively realize we’ve done something catastrophic. The only thing that can bring us back is discipline - the antidote to modern burnout.
I can hear you bristling. A rather abrasive sound. It’s not discipline in the productivity-twitter-guy style. That will only lead to more burnout. That’s a sickness masquerading as a solution. It just won’t work.
In this case, meaningful discipline, separated into 3 distinct parts that make up a whole - each with it’s own nuance and each a very useful tool indeed. These are reactive, structural, and expansive discipline.
“Development of the will is more important than the outcome.” - Stutz
Reactive discipline is the one people tend to understand the best, because it is so present in modern life. We’re bombarded by guilty pleasures - near infinite dopamine, on the cheap. If we can’t find the will to ignore these temptations as they arise (and you can bet your bottom dollar they will), then all of the other disciplines become much harder.
“This is how you handle a bump in the road, even if it’s a big bump.” - Stutz
The trope ‘Discipline = Freedom’ is anything but. It’s trite. It’s wise. It’s true. When we can say no to the things that don’t serve us in the moment, we access a kind of freedom we didn’t have before. Reactive discipline in our spending creates more room for meaningful things like romantic travel with your spouse, or a timely investment, or business opportunity with your uncle. Reactive discipline in the face of food - saying no to the chemical ridden donut - gives us the infinite freedom of a healthy body and a calm mind.
Ironically, although we might understand reactive discipline the best, it’s likely the hardest one for most of us.
Structural discipline is about having a form to your day. We can all sense we’re on a path, even if we don’t yet know where that path leads us. If we can put the structures in place necessary to walk that path, we forge our identity and we have the freedom to do our work.
“This suggests that…you show up.” - Stutz
That’s not to say that the structure has to be overly rigid. That will only cause more stress. But you do have to make commitments to yourself, and you do have to make good on those commitments if you’re going to have a high reputation of yourself, with yourself. Like Musashi said, ‘When you know the way broadly, you will see it in all things.’
The human day is more like watercolour than a pencil sketch. You have the frame (24 hours), you have the general impression of the picture (your identity and your work), but what happens to the picture ultimately is a co-creation of your hand and the paint. Surrendering to what life brings and what our God given abilities are. We all have them - structural discipline is the key that unlocks the self.
Structural discipline feels completely natural when you’re in it. The rest of the world feels glimmered somehow - like we’re swimming downstream and the work is effortless. You’ve probably heard this referred to as flow. Every time I’ve been in a moment of ego or desperation, it feels exactly the opposite of flow. Like I’m fighting a current, like I’m outside of my community, like I’m unable to connect with my people. It’s likely we’ve found ourselves there because the day has lost it’s form.
Expansive discipline is perhaps the most difficult to grasp - it may have eluded you until the moment Stutz revealed it on the page. Expansive discipline is having the wisdom, and the bravery, to do things that allow you to expand. If you’re not moving toward your work - if you’re not working the process laid down before you - you’re by nature retracting. You’re closing yourself off to the rest of the world and the incredible joys of people and place. If you resist the temptation to retract (it’s easier than ever) you are acting in a way that allows you to expand and encounter more life.
“You must create in an environment where you have no idea whether people are goingt o accept, or even understand, what you make.” - Stutz
This is the paradox of being well in a sick culture. In my youth and hubris (I’m slowly but surely coming out of this stupor) I attempted to reject the culture of my birth. I didn’t understand it and I didn’t feel like it understood me. I can’t remember a single moment of wholeness until I found myself in the birthplace of humanity - the Great Rift Valley of Africa. But coming back to ones culture - reverse culture-shock - getting through it, and then embedding within it is a wonderful homecoming.
Yes, we’ve blasted ourselves with LED lights, wi-fi, NNEMFs, Top 40 music, reality TV, destroyed the food and thus the environment, and seem to think we can work alone, online, all day, every day, but I’ve come to discover it is better to be a part of the culture than separate from it, unless you’re prepared to leave it entirely. If you’re here, be here. Be here completely. Approach the day, not ignoring that we’ve royally fucked this up, but with the mentality that we’re all in this together, and I’m going to do my best to help my community and the people in it.
That’s expansive discipline.
Meaningful work then, is a conduit not only to energy, but to a form of identity that you can use as fuel. Picasso reminds us that inspiration is real “…but it has to find you working.” The Muse can’t find you unless she knows where to look.
“…presenting yourself in a rhythmically predictable way attracts higher forces.” - Stutz
All we need is a point of view, a set of tools, and a lot of time.
See you on the road.
““This is the other secret that real artists know and wannabe writers don’t. When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us. The Muse takes note of our dedication. She approves. We have earned favor in her sight. When we sit down and work, we become like a magnetized rod that attracts iron filings. Ideas come. Insights accrete.” - Pressfield
