It wasn’t exactly a nervous breakdown, but it was something close.
Around the time I was finishing Ego is the Enemy, I ran into a wall.
I had just watched American Apparel implode. I had lost a mentor and friend I had looked up to and cared about (who had let me know the feeling was not mutual). The talent agency I had started at went bust, too.
These people who said they “saw themselves in me” turned out to be people they didn’t want to be. I myself was becoming someone I did not want to be. I was working all the time. I was splitting my time between Austin and Los Angeles. I was angry and stressed all the time. I worked late, taking and making phone calls well past midnight, as I had seen Dov Charney do for years (something I wrote about recently). To say I was burned out was an understatement.
I remember a panic attack because the wifi wasn’t connecting. I remember being too tired to think. I remember being glued to my phone. I remember juggling way too many balls at the same time. I remember coming across a quote from Bertrand Russell that the first sign of losing your mind was the belief that your work was terribly, terribly important.
I ended up telling this story at the beginning of Ego is the Enemy, but it’s something I had to work out in my actual life, too. Therapy. Some Workaholics Anonymous meetings. Some not-so-fun conversations with my future wife (I’m sure they were not fun for her either, but anyway, I was the one on the receiving end of the hard truths).
Basically, like a lot of people, I had worked myself pretty close to the edge. I’m lucky in that I didn’t quite go over the side.
This is why I don’t like a lot of the hustle porn and grind culture that entrepreneurs and influencers try to sell young people. It’s not healthy. In private, it’s not glamorous. It doesn’t lead to anyone’s best work. In fact, it usually prevents people from doing their best work.
Prince Albert, the husband of Queen Victoria, brought much-needed order and routine to the life of his queen. He streamlined processes and took up a share of the burdens that had previously fallen on Victoria alone. Indeed, many of the so-called Victorian traits of the era originated with him. He was disciplined, fastidious, ambitious, old school.
Under his pressing, their schedule became one meeting, dispatch, and social obligation after another. Albert was almost constantly busy, working so much that he occasionally vomited from stress. Never shirking a responsibility or an opportunity, he took on every bit of power his wife was willing to share. In turn, they seized every formal and informal bit of influence the monarchy had in the British Empire at that time. They were a pair of workaholics and proud of it.
As Albert wrote to an advisor, he spent hours a day reading newspapers in German, French, and English. “One can let nothing pass,” he said, “without losing the connection and coming in consequence to wrong conclusions.” He was right, the stakes were certainly high. His expert understanding of the international situation helped Britain avoid being drawn into the U.S. Civil War.
But the truth was, Albert threw himself equally hard into projects of much less importance. Organizing the Great Exhibition of 1851, a nearly six-month-long carnival that showed off the wonders of the British Empire, consumed years of his life. A few days before it opened, he wrote to his stepmother, “I am more dead than alive from overwork.” It was, to be certain, a beautiful and memorable event, but his health never recovered.
He and his wife knew no moderation and had little fun. “I go on working at my treadmill, as life seems to me,” Albert said in 1861. It’s not a bad description of the exhausting and repetitive life he and Victoria led. Starting in 1840, Victoria bore nine children in seventeen years, four of whom were born in consecutive years. In a time when women still regularly died during childbirth (anesthesia—chloroform—only became available for her eighth pregnancy), Victoria, who was a mere five feet tall, was constantly pregnant. Even with the benefits of limitless household help, she bore an enormous physical burden on top of her duties as queen. Upon her death, it was found that she was suffering from a prolapsed uterus and a hernia that must have caused her incredible pain without end.
There’s nothing wrong with having a large family—the throne did need heirs—but it never seemed to have occurred to the couple that they had any say in the matter. “Man is a beast of burden,” Albert wrote to his brother, “and he is only happy if he has to drag his burden and if he has little free will. My experience teaches me every day to understand the truth of this more and more.” As a result, his and Victoria’s existence was hardly one of privilege or relaxation or freedom. It was instead an endless cycle of obligation after obligation, done at a breakneck pace that the two of them inflicted on themselves.
It is a testament to their affection for each other that their marriage survived. Victoria was at least aware of the deleterious effects all this work had on Albert. She wrote of the consequences of his “over-love of business” on their relationship, and she also noticed that his health was flagging. His racing mind kept him awake at night, his stomach cramped, and his skin drooped.
Instead of listening to these warning signs, he soldiered on for years, working harder and harder, forcing his body to comply. And then, suddenly, it quit on him. His strength failed. He drifted into incoherency, and at 10:50 p.m. on December 14, 1861, Albert took his three final breaths and died. The cause? Crohn’s disease, exacerbated by extreme stress. He had literally worked his guts out.
Is that what you want to be? A workhorse that draws its load until it collapses and dies, still shod and in the harness? Is that what you were put on this planet for?
Remember, the main cause of injury for elite athletes is not tripping and falling. It’s not collisions. It’s overuse. Pitchers and quarterbacks throw out their arms. Basketball players blow out their knees. Others just get tired of the grinding hours and the pressure. Michael Phelps prematurely ended his swimming career for this reason—despite all the gold medals, he never wanted to get in a pool again. It’s hard to blame him. He put everything, including his own sanity and health, second to shaving seconds off his times.
We think that to be great at what you do requires complete and total dedication. That there’s no time for anything else.
Nonsense.
After the implosion of my personal and professional life in 2014/2015, I moved to a ranch in Texas. I started a family. I started keeping more regular hours. I put less into my work. And you know what? My work has gotten better. (Cal Newport would call this “Slow Productivity” in his book, which you should take a break from your work and go read).
In fact, some of my biggest creative breakthroughs came to me when I was doing anything but working. The idea for Ego Is The Enemy came to me while I was doing laps in a pool in Austin (which I talk about here). The idea for the Stoic Virtues series struck me while on a hike in the Lost Pines forest in Bastrop with my family. A few weeks later on vacation in Florida, the idea for The Daily Dad came to me as I built a sandcastle with my son.
I’ve been repeatedly gifted with ideas—from the muses, from my own subconscious, I don’t know—when I least expect it. In Zen, they talk about the problem of “too much willful will,” basically, trying too hard, being too intentional. Real breakthroughs come when you’re not so controlling, when you let go. I find this to be true in my own life. By not putting my work first, by not taking it all so seriously, I’ve been able to reach for and hold on to more than I was with a very tight grasp.
Don’t get me wrong, executing projects at a high level requires an immense amount of work and uninterrupted focus. It requires being at the office. It requires trying very hard to get it right. But the point is that none of that would have been possible without first letting go a little, without deciding to take a hike or go to the beach.
The best of the best know this.
In Stillness Is The Key, I tell the story of Eilud Kipchoge, possibly the greatest distance runner ever to live. Kipchoge is known for actively working to make sure he is not overworking. In training, he deliberately does not give his full effort, saving that instead for the few times per year when he races. He prefers instead to train at 80 percent of his capacity on occasion to 90 percent—to maintain and preserve his longevity and sanity as an athlete. Runners know this is called threshold training, but it has major lifestyle implications too. When Michael Phelps came back to swimming after his breakdown in 2012, it was possible because he was willing to reimagine his approach to training with more balance.
You are not a beast of burden. You are not meant to be ridden into the ground, shot and then replaced by the next horse.
Yes, we have important duties to provide for our families and to be a reliable coworker, boss, employee. Many of us have talents and gifts so extraordinary that we owe it to ourselves and the world to express and fulfill them. But we’re not going to be able to do that if we’re not taking care of ourselves, or if we have stretched ourselves to the breaking point.
It’s important to remind ourselves that life is much more of a marathon than it is a sprint. In a way, this is the distinction between confidence and ego. Can you trust yourself and your abilities enough to keep something in reserve? Can you protect the stillness and the inner peace necessary to win the longer race of life?
The email you think you need so desperately to respond to can wait. Your screenplay does not need to be hurried, and you can even take a break between it and the next one. The only person truly requiring you to spend the night at the office is yourself. It’s okay to say no. Your interior life will thank you. You’ll be much more clear-headed and equipped to do a good job when you’re not weak from complete and utter overwork.
It’s human being, not human doing, for a reason.
The most surefire way to make yourself more fragile, to cut your career short, is to be undisciplined about rest and recovery. To push yourself too hard, too fast. To overtrain and to pursue the false economy of overwork.
To last, to be great, you have to understand how to rest. After all, it’s not ambition or skill that is going to set you apart but sanity, balance and the discipline of your discipline.
