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3MM: Meaning, Boys & Critics
3 MINUTE MONDAYHi friend, My US & Canada solo show tour goes live on presale at 10am PT / 1pm ET tomorrow. I think some shows might actually sell out before general on-sale on Thursday - so make sure you don’t wait if you want to come. Get first access to VIP, Meet & Greet and Tickets here. Anyway, I’ve been trying to work this idea into an understandable form for a while, I really hope you like it… "When a man can't find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure.” — Viktor Frankl Frankl is arguing that a lack of meaning causes people to seek temporary relief in superficial pursuits, rather than addressing the underlying existential void. Perhaps for many, maybe even most people, this is a big issue. But there is another group who suffer with the opposite problem; Frankl’s Inverse Law. "When a man can't find a deep sense of pleasure, they distract themselves with meaning.” If ease, grace, joy and playfulness don’t come easily to you, one solution is to ignore moment-to-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 feel gratified. TLDR: you prioritise meaning over happiness because happiness doesn’t come easily to you. The problem is that as Bill Perkins says, delayed gratification in the extreme results in no gratification. “If we are unduly absorbed in improving our lives we may forget altogether to live them." — Alan Watts 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 a tribute to your work. Don’t mistake humourless and fun-lacking seriousness with being sophisticated and caring about your pursuit. You took Type A advice for Type B people and turned it into a religion. Thoreau says “The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it”. 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. 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 clear 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 you’d like to write a novel or spend more of your time with your ageing parents or fighting climate change (or having fun), at some point you’re just going to have to start doing it.” — Oliver Burkeman
MODERN WISDOMI do a podcast where I pretend to have a British accent. You should subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. This week’s upcoming episodes: Monday. Thursday. Saturday. THINGS I'VE LEARNED1. “From the day they start primary school, to the day they leave higher education, the progress of boys now lags behind girls. The proportion of young men failing to move from education into employment or training has been steadily growing for 30 years. Since the pandemic alone, the number of males aged 16 to 24 who are not in education, employment or training (NEET) has increased by a staggering 40% compared to just 7% for females. For those young men who are in work, the much-vaunted gender pay gap has been reversed. Young men are now out-earned by their female peers, including among the university educated.” — The Center for Social Justice. 2. “For young adults, by far the most common number of sex partners in the past year is zero or one. About 10-20% of the young adult population has lots of sex with each other, while the rest are either sexless or in committed relationships.” — Rob Henderson 3. “One of my favourite definitions of imposter syndrome: the fear that other people are judging me as harshly as I’m judging myself.”— Dr John Delony LIFE HACKUber Black XL If you need to show off to a client, girl or just treat yourself after a hard day, get picked up by a bloke in a shirt & tie in a huge blacked out car for about twice the cost as a normal Uber. Unnecessary treat, but super worth it. Big love, Try my productivity drink Neutonic. PS |
3 Minute Monday
Podcaster with 1bn+ plays. I write about the most important lessons from the best thinkers on the planet. 300,000+ people read my free newsletter. Press subscribe to join.
3 MINUTE MONDAY Hi friend, The Modern Wisdom Reading List Vol. 2. It’s happening. I finally finished it. This one took me so much time to put together, I really hope you like it. Goes live to the public this Wednesday 2nd July. You guys will get access before anyone else though, just check your email inbox this Tuesday 💜 Anyway, here’s 6 rules about productivity: 1. Your life does not need to be easier. It needs to be simpler. Your system is designed to handle stress and challenge but not...
3 MINUTE MONDAY Hi friend, Brand new Neutonic Focus Blend flavour just dropped. Limited Edition Watermelon Mint stick packs. Get them before they're sold out. Anyway, onto what I’ve been thinking about this week… “It is a supremely cruel thing to have your mind conjure a desire which it is functionally unable to realise.” — Max Barry This describes a special category of problem that I think about quite often. Person A has the talent to become successful but doesn’t have the resilience to...
3 MINUTE MONDAY Hi friend, Come see me live in NYC, Boston, Denver, Austin, Salt Lake City & Chicago. I see a problem with taking advice from super successful people. There’s a trend of people who’ve “made it” explaining what their routine looks like now, when they’re asked how they became successful. They’ll talk about work-life balance, the importance of leverage, walking lots, early bedtimes, playing with ease and grace, not obsessing, transcending their resentment and overcoming a sense...