Name: Your Work Ethic is a Coping Mechanism
Uploaded: 2026-02-06T10:28:30.000Z
Duration: 9 min 7 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Adverbs of degree

I've been trying to work on this idea for a really long time.

Adverbs of manner

And again, these are thinly veiled, actually just totally transparent autobiographical notes to self.

Viktor Frankl has this famous quote where he says, when a man can't find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure.

So Frankl 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 even most people, this is a big issue.

But there is another group who suffer with the opposite problem, and this is Frankl'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 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 ever feel grateful.

The tldr 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.

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 non valuable 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 responders 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.

You've managed to subjugate your joy as tribute to your work.

Do not mistake humorless 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 fucking religion.

Thoreau 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 Berkman I this is a suite, I guess, 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 need for inspiration 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 hyper responder and didn't need to hear more of it.

You actually needed to hear, maybe you should cash some of that in.

But I think that idea that Frankl'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 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 Frankl's inverse law see the opposite.

They see work as the set point and leisure as the aberration.

And again, like letting go of this, like, fuck, like I want to build the life that I want.

I want to get out of the country or the fucking 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.

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.

Some, maybe most drugs have a dose response curve.

You can see it's kind of a a you 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?

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.

And now they've taken it Even further with AG1 next gen, the same one scoop once a day ritual, but

this time backed by four clinical trials.

In those trials, it was shown to fill common nutrient gaps, improve key nutrient levels in just three months, and

increase healthy gut bacteria by 10 times.

Even in people who already eat well, they've upgraded the formula with better probiotics, more bioavailable nutrients and clinical validation.

And it's still NSF certified for sport, meaning that even Olympic athletes can use it.

Plus, if I ever actually found something better, I would switch.

But I haven't, which is why I still use it every day.

And if you're on the fence, they've got a 90 day money back guarantee.

Buy it and try it and if you don't love it, they will give you your money back.

Right now you can get a free bottle of vitamin D3K two free AG1 travel packs, a welcome kit, and

that 90 day money back guarantee by going to the link in the description below or heading to drinkag1.com modernwisdom that's drinkag1.com ModernWisdom Congratulations for making it to the end of a clip.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Your Work Ethic is a Coping Mechanism

struggle

ritual

guarantee

realize