October 24, 2022 | Read Online

Tigershit

This lesser-known scientific theory might just change your life

Cole Schafer
October 24, 2022

The Preview...

If at the end of this piece you find yourself wanting a reminder to work smarter rather than harder, boy do I have a doodad for you.

The Movie...

For most of my career, I've notoriously burnt the candle at both ends.

The danger in this, of course, is that while a candle spitting out two flames at once might produce a substantial amount of heat, it's not sustainable. Worst yet, this kind of foul play can wind up burning the candle handler, as well as the loved ones of the candle handler.

I get burned every single year and always around the same time––the late summer to early fall––after clocking in 50-60 hour weeks for eight or nine months straight, rarely allowing myself a day off to hole up somewhere and rest.

It took me entering into a relationship with a woman I want to build a life with––who isn't afraid to tell me the truth, no matter how violent it may be to my ego––to realize that the obsessive way in which I was approaching my life, my work, my exercise and my constant need for self-improvement was slowly killing me.

This past August, the two of us were on a red-eye sailing home from a life-changing adventure in Japan. While I was deeply touched to have had the opportunity to walk the land my late grandmother immigrated from so many decades ago, I spent a good chunk of the trip battling feelings of anxiousness, terrified I was getting behind on my writing.

Instead of taking some much-needed rest on the red-eye home, she watched me pull out my laptop and bang away at it for nine hours until I was so red-eyed that I collapsed into a slumber.

Later on, when I rose, she told me––in not these exact words––that she was seriously worried about what my work was doing to me.

I ignored her and I continued to work with this same ferocity back in Nashville, only to find myself burning out entirely a few days later. It's been two months. Last week was the first time I was able to sit down and write anything that looked remotely like advertising.

But what can I say? I'm a product of my environment. I'm American!

Being American means a lot of things but it especially means equating your self-worth with how hard you work, confusing who you are with what you do, bragging incessantly about how many hours you clock in each week; and sacrificing your happiness, your well-being and your relationships for the off-chance at wealth and greatness in your given occupation.

We have a 1% chance at becoming millionaires in our lifetimes yet we're willing to bet the farm––the farm being our present happiness and contentment––for worse odds than what we'd find at a fucking roulette table.

Why?

I think the answer begins with our obsession with "productivity" which has permeated practically everything in society since the onset of the Industrial Age.

Back in 1932 the British Mathematician Bertrand Russell wrote a line that feels as if it was written in 2022...

"The modern man thinks that everything ought to be done for the sake of something else, and never for its own sake."

I wonder what Russell would have written today, observing humankind listening to podcasts at 2x speed while gunning for Inbox Zero while refreshing LinkedIn while feining as though they're paying attention on a Zoom Call they don't need to be on.

In Celeste Headlee's book Do Nothing––which I highly recommend by the way––she writes that the feeling of being productive is not the same as actually producing something.

All of us have experienced the sheer disappointment of feeling utterly exhausted after working a ten-hour day only to have nothing significant to point to when asked by a friend or lover, "What'd you work on today?"

At times, existing in the modern world can feel like we're caught in a Rube Goldberg Machine of our own making where the scoreboard is not deep, valuable work but instead shallow productivity that leaves us anxious, empty and constantly craving something more.

Headlee eludes to this Rube Goldberg Machines by posing a fascinating question...

Why do I have more to do than my grandmother, despite owning a dishwasher, microwave and portable computer?

Worst yet, this productivity is killing us.

The American Institute of Stress argues that more than half of all doctor visits are prompted by stress-related illnesses.

Other experts believe that repeated attempts at making our minds "multi-task"––something we're simply not designed to do––is actually causing damage to the gray matter in our brains.

Not to mention, as work is getting in the way of our romantic relationships, we're forfeiting many of the life-saving effects of such bonds.

One experiment that Headlee outlines in her book involve forty-two married couples between the ages of twenty-two and seventy-seven who were given small wounds on their arms. The couples who admitted there was trouble in their marriages took twice as long to heal as those with supportive partners.

Yes, stress hinders our body's healing, love can speed it up.

The solution to all of this might just be the Siberian Tiger.

Idle Theory says that the least idle animals have the highest chance at survival.

In other words, animals that meet their survival needs with the least amount of work are most likely to survive (due to energy conservation).

The Siberian Tiger weighs up to 600 lbs. It can survive in sub-zero temperatures. It has night vision. It can run 50 mph. It can leap 16 feet in the air and broad jump 25 feet. It can swim up to 7 miles a day. It can bite at 6x the force of a human being. It can shatter the jaw of a bull with the swipe of its pall.

Yet, its superpower is this...

The Siberian Tiger sleeps up to 20 hours a day.

If we look at how hard top performers really work, we will see they work more like Siberian Tigers than they do the Startup founders humanity seems to be so obsessed with.

In Rework, the authors argue that Charles Darwin worked only four hours a day and Kobe Bryant six hours a day yet the former was able to produce the masterpiece The Origin of Species and the latter was able to win 5 championship rings.

When you look at these two examples, you feel a bit silly working 40, 50 and sometimes 60-hour weeks, lying to yourself that it's helping you get ahead––bullshit.

Or, should I say tigershit.

But, I digress.

By Cole Schafer.

P.S. If you're new to Sticky Notes, you can subscribe here.

Let the tigers through the door––$27

I made a memento that can serve as a reminder to both myself and my readers that we can't truly live until we've faced the very thing that scares us most.

This striking, one-and-a-half-inch wide brass coin is hand-forged right here in the United States and is as heavy and as dense as .45 Caliber Slug.

Etched along its face, you'll find a 700 lb tiger-in-miniature and, along its back, a mantra reminding you to always take the sonofabitch head-on...

Rawrr.

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