You Really Don’t Need to Keep Reminding Yourself That You’re Going to Die.
One of the biggest drawbacks of social media is the fact that some of the advice offered by its most prominent influencers has the potential to be harmful. One of the recent trends that concerns me involves the resurgence of the latin phrase “memento mori”, meaning “remember death” or, essentially, “remember that you’re going to die”. (You can even buy medallions which include the inscription Memento Mori in case you forget.)
As Benjamin Franklin put it, there are two certainties in life: death and taxes. All things being equal, neither is desirable, while acknowledgment of the former might rankle with the human survival instinct. It’s this rankling that some influencers take to be so useful.
Here’s the logic: Because I am going to die then I better hurry up and do something useful with my life before it’s too late! The inevitability of death, then, spurs on the individual to forgo all useless and superfluous activities in the pursuit of making a great contribution, achieving success and leaving their mark on the world.
Useful, eh? Manipulating your inherent survival instinct and fear of living a meaningless, forgettable life to motivate you to cast off the dross, play less video games, watch less Netflix and waste less time on social media in the pursuit of success!
Dangerous and Potentially Harmful
But it isn’t just useless activities and time wasting that these high priests of hustle encourage their followers to forgo; it’s things that are vital to health and well-being.
One influential marketer tweeted the following on Friday night, “Remember that weekends are not for rest but to get ahead!!” Soundbites like this, without caveat or qualification, are dangerous. What is someone who looks to this influencer as an example to infer from it? That they’re lazy if they rest at the weekend? That they won’t be successful if they rest at the weekend? That rest itself isn’t valuable? Dangerous and potentially harmful.
I also came across an example of an influencer who sets reminders on his phone that he’s going to die. Perhaps, for him, that’s useful in ensuring that he’s not lazy or wasteful with his time. Perhaps he gets enough sleep and rest for his long-term health needs, irrespective of the constant nag of his inevitable demise. Perhaps, for him, it works. But for others this morbid reminder might induce anxiety, damaging mental health, while leading to a chronic sense of expediency that rides roughshod over holistic well-being. To suggest that others constantly remind themselves that they’re going to die, without caveat or qualification, is dangerous and potentially harmful.
I’ve heard other influencers rant and rave about the need to work into the wee hours of the morning throughout the week to build a side-hustle. Sleep, it can only be inferred from such advice, is the enemy of success! Again, dangerous and potentially harmful.
Do the high priests of hustle really understand self-care? Do they see the value of it? The necessity of it? Or is it only for those weaker souls who are lazy and wasteful with their time and talents?
I’ve heard some of these influencers throw in comments about self-care in an offhand, casual way, but it’s distinctly unwise to treat self-care as a mere afterthought if you want to live a healthy, happy and, yes, successful life over the long-term.
Yes, each of us is going to die, but wouldn’t it be better if we didn’t expedite the occasion through contrived expediency and poor self-care?
Burnout Bummer
Overworking and poor self-care cause burnout. I’ve been there several times before, so I’m well qualified to speak about it. Burnout affects every aspect of a person’s life, including, ironically, our contribution and output.
As I look at the 3 Stewardships self-governance framework that I created, I see how each area of stewardship is adversely affected by burnout. Here are a few general examples:
Self: physical, mental and emotional exhaustion, lower resistance to illness, negative outlook;
Relationships: compromised, possibly jeopardised, by impaired physical, mental and emotional state;
Contribution: limited, low impact due to the above.
There can, of course, be more drastic consequences to overworking and burnout, as noted by Jeffrey Pfeffer in his book Dying for a Paycheck, including death. That might sound drastic, but that doesn’t make it any less true.
Thankfully, we don’t have to take advice uncritically and risk sleepwalking our way into burnout through relentless hustle. We can increase our awareness of our physical health and take stock of our emotional, mental and spiritual needs, too, before forgoing self-care and sleep. These are better guides than any influencer or guru. Self-awareness is foundational to effective self-governance.
That said, there are successful influencers who really do understand the need for self-care, such as Arianna Huffington whose book, The Sleep Revolution: Transforming Your Life One Night at a Time, talks about sleeping your way to success. In an interview with Forbes, Huffington lamented that, “On a collective level, we’ve devalued relaxation and downtime to the point of stigmatizing them.”
As I wrote in a previous piece, some of the world’s toughest activist investors regularly practice yoga as part of their self-care. Self-care is simply imperative to the achievement of sustainable success.
Not only can a lack of self-care impede success; it simply isn’t necessary. You don’t have to rush to succeed.
“For far too long, we have equated success with working around the clock, driving yourself into the ground, sleep deprivation and burnout.” – Arianna Huffington
No Need to Rush
You may have already come across the names of high profile entrepreneurs who achieved success later in life, such as Colonel Sanders with KFC (62), Thomas Edison with General Electric (45) and Henry Royce with Rolls-Royce (43). There are many more. Additionally, an academic research paper, Age and High-Growth Entrepreneurship, shows that “A 50-year-old founder is 1.8 times more likely to achieve upper-tail growth than a 30-year-old founder,”. The authors also assert, “Our primary finding is that successful entrepreneurs are middle-aged, not young.”
There are a couple of valuable lessons to be drawn from this. Most obviously, entrepreneurial success isn’t by any means reserved for the young. But equally important is the recognition that if the middle-aged are more likely to be successful entrepreneurs than the young then it’s essential that one’s health in middle-age is up to the task! Poor self-care in younger years will jeopardise health in later years, which in turn will diminish one’s chances of success.
“And see that all these things are done in wisdom and order; for it is not requisite that a man should run faster than he has strength. And again, it is expedient that he should be diligent, that thereby he might win the prize; therefore, all things must be done in order.” – Mosiah 4:27
Stewardship, Yes! Burnout, No!
To be clear, I’m not suggesting that anyone puts their feet up and does nothing outside of the 9 ’til 5 before middle-age; I’m suggesting that rather than sleepwalking our way into burnout through a misplaced sense of expediency we instead adopt the stewardship mindset.
A stewardship is a conscience-based responsibility to care; the essence of stewardship is the application of love through self-governance. Stewardship is the mindset necessary for sustainable success. The antitheses of the stewardship mindset are woefully inadequate over the long-term. Sacrificing holistic, long-term well-being won’t cut it.
Again, each of us has three areas of stewardship:
Self: well-being, character, competence;
Relationships: at home, in our communities, and in the wider world;
Contribution: at home, in our communities, and in the wider world.
Self is the foundational starting point, which underpins both relationships and contribution. A successful business could be part of contribution. If we exercise good stewardship in each area of our lives then success will come, but more importantly it will be built on solid foundations.
An Alternative to Memento Mori
It’s only right in closing that I suggest an alternative to memento mori. My suggestion is santosha. It’s a Sanskrit combination word that means contentment, satisfaction. (Its two components are SaM (completely) and Tosha (contentment).)
If we are to achieve entrepreneurial success later in life than originally expected then a bit more santosha might help us to not burnout along the way.