A few years back, the romance author Danielle Steel was lauded for her relentless writing process.

Over the course of her long and storied career, Steel has written somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 books, releasing them at a rate of roughly seven books per year.

To achieve this prolific production, the seventy-year-old Steel revealed that she regularly:

If we’re viewing Steel’s work strictly through the lens of her creative output, she is the closest thing we have to a modern-day Van Gogh, who was believed to average a new piece of artwork every 36 hours.

You read about these writers and artists and it’s difficult not to feel insecure. While their intensity should be respected and their work appreciated, we must also realize that they are sick.

Idleness Aversion is a psychological concept that says people are believed to be happier when they’e busier.

The seeds of Idleness Aversion were planted back in the Protestant times when one’s work ethic was directly correlated with their chances of getting into heaven.

How’s that old creepy phrase go? Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.

More times than not, folks who are wildly ambitious suffer from varying degrees of Idleness Aversion, using their creative work as a means to avoid facing their own trauma.

What a lot of people don’t know about steel is that she lost one of her sons to a drug overdose and she’s been divorced five times.

While her work has been a safe haven for millions of readers nursing broken hearts, it’s obvious her writing is just as much a passion as it is an escape.

In the age of overwork, it’s wildly important to learn to differentiate between when we’re working because we genuinely want to work and when we’re working because we’re in pain.

The irony that this edition of The Process is arriving on Sunday at 2:30 p.m. CDT is not lost on me. I’m a recovering workaholic that relapses constantly.

By Cole Schafer.

P.S. If this newsletter left you feeling inspired, do me a huge favor and tell one person to subscribe.

P.P.S. This story was inspired by Oliver Burkeman’s stupendous book, Four Thousand Weeks.