In this edition of the Peak Performance Newsletter, we will be discussing:

• Why is work generally considered hard and tedious?

• The Psychology behind working hard

• How to use this insight to work even harder

Before we dive into this topic,

Authors Acknowledgements:

When I was brainstorming possible topics to talk about in this newsletter, I came up with this interesting insight while I was on my holiday break for a couple of days. I noticed that usually for most weeks, after a long week of doing hard tasks like exercising and working, I would find myself quite tired and begin to binge shows or scroll on YouTube for the majority of the weekends. I’m sure that most of you can relate, but afterwards I often regret wasting a lot of time doing nothing even when I could have been working towards something more fulling instead.

But I only realized the boredom really setting in when I was on my extended holiday break. I was fairly unproductive for the majority of the break and barely managed to get one post out that week for this newsletter. To be fairly honest with you, and I don’t mean this in a bad way, it takes a lot of discipline and willpower to even sit my ass down and write even 1 of these posts for the week. This was a realization that I had to accept for myself even though I always felt very fulfilled during and after writing these posts, it was always starting it that was the most difficult part.

I always prided myself in being a disciplined Indvidual and to do the hard work especially when you don’t feel like it, but I really saw myself falling short when it came to writing these posts. Now in other aspects of my self-development journey, like my health and fitness journey, I found myself being very disciplined and consistent with my training. I contribute most of my discipline when it came to exercising just due to the fact that I was very consistent with it in the beginning 1 to 2 years of my journey, so I found it easy to stay on track.

I had this notion that my discipline when it came to the gym would translate well to other areas of my self-development journey, but I was mistaken.

Again, it’s not like I don’t enjoy writing these posts, but it’s really starting point of trying to brainstorm of what I should write next is what I find to be the most challenging. I’m still a newbie when it comes to newsletter space, but hopefully that consistency will start to develop once I keep progressing and staying on track when it comes to writing these posts. I often view it as a new opportunity or a new path of resistance that I really get to challenge myself and discipline myself to sit down and write a new post each week, which is good for callousing your mind to do hard things.

So, what I’m trying to say is that I still have a long way to go when it comes to staying really disciplined with this craft, but I believe that If I keep progressing, I can get to this point where the consistency just comes naturally to me, similar to when it comes to physical training.

After reading whole this entire post, the purpose is to give you the tools necessary to make work feel more effortless and fulfilling but, the goal is to give you this secret “hack” that will make you feel motivated every day to work hard on your goals. The real key to work harder is going to be heavily reliant on your ability to do hard things even when you don’t feel like it, so building your discipline skill.

So that was basically when the realization hit me, what makes it so that hard work is very tiring at some times but also fulfilling and sought after other times?

Why is Work Generally Considered Hard and Tedious?

When you think of the depiction of work, you usually view it in a negative connotation, something that is mandatory to do but is undesired by many. You can almost visualize yourself cramped in an office or classroom, for 7-8 hours, task after task, and then when you come home, you found yourself often indulging in easy pleasures that feels satisfying in the moment but fills you with a sense of regret in the end. Afterward, you down on your bed, trying to get a restful night of sleep, only dreading to complete this cycle all over again, for tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.

This the common routine for most ordinary people, including myself. But have you ever wondered what makes work as tiresome and boring as it seems, and what insights could we apply to actually change our viewpoint on working hard?

That is when I came to the realization that the work itself isn’t the hard part, but it’s our environment and other internal factors that dictates our mentality on being able to do hard tasks.

In order to dive deeper on this topic, we must look into our psychology that makes up our work ethic.

The Psychology Behind Working Hard

First look at the psychology of early humans in primitive times to further identify our desire to work hard. Imagine the early human hunter/gathers of ancient times, basically caveman times. There would be no modern-day pleasures like social media, television, etc. around the time to keep us companied. You can visualize to yourself an average caveman waking up early, going out on the hunt, bringing back food to the tribe, defending the tribe against any nearby invaders, and then getting a relatively good night’s rest when he was done with the grueling tasks during the daytime. I know that what I’m saying sounds insane but bear with me here.

Ask yourself this question, would this caveman have the same modern-day irritations and frustrations that we have to work hard every day? Would you imagine this caveman sitting back and complaining that he has to go on the hunt today? Would you imagine that this caveman would have the same symptoms of overworking and burning out like we do in the modern day?

Now obviously this caveman is going to experience physical side effects of the everyday tasks that he does but what I'm talking about is more of the symptoms regarding our mental health and our work capacity. So, after you’ve answered those questions to yourself, what was the answer that you’ve came up with? The answer would be probably not, right?

Now obviously we don’t know the exact regime of what a caveman did a hundred thousand years ago, but you sort of imagine that these symptoms we experience now weren’t really prevalent during these times.

My conclusion about this is that as humans, we have the innate desire to work hard, make progress towards a meaningful goal, and to adapt and grow overtime. The psychological structure of our brain is programmed to find fulfillment in working towards a task or goal. Without this structure, society and civilizations would not have developed like how it is today.

Note:

Now, I rarely try to back up my statements with every single source possible, just due to the fact that I try to make my newsletter itself to be as open-ended and free to interpretation as possible. In this community I am trying to build, I value the ideology of having free will and using my advice in a way that suits your best interests. You are never obligated to blindly take my advice at face value, but rather it is heavily encouraged that you find what best suits you in your current situation and reject what is not useful to you at this time.

However, I am going to include a source that explains the negative effects relating to cognitive decline in the elderly in taking a prolonged period of time of no working or learning. This is to show and to further back up the claim that it is vital and essential for humans to be working at some type of craft or be learning new concepts in order to maintain this state called neuroplasticity. These studies show the negative effects due to aging, but it should be stated that it can further prove that working towards something is an essential task for human beings.

It should also be noted that elderly people are often retired and generally have more free time, which can advocate more space for the degenerative effects to begin if they have not properly stimulated their brain with the adequate stimulus in which in this case, working towards a goal. If you want to learn more about neuroplasticity and about the study, you can do so here.

Again, since the topic that we are discussing is quite nuanced and abstract, I figured that it would be best to give you a source so that you’ll be able to grasp this concept better and to understand my perspective.

So, where am I going with this?

I think that we all have that inner desire to work hard towards a goal and to make progress on that goal, but there are certain factors that are only present in modern times that actually hinders this natural desire to work hard at something. This could be a contributing reason why many of us have been quite complacent and mediocre when it comes to our work. But not only are we more complacent, but the larger majority of us don’t even feel any sense of fulfillment and purpose whenever we accomplish something that would be considered as a difficult task.

Now you may argue, “Well in ancient times, you were pretty much obligated to be a hard worker. It was harder times back then, food was scarce, resources were limited, they didn’t have the technology that we do now, and they would be frequent conflicts and acts of violence due to this” And with that, you would be correct, I’m not specially saying that those times were any easier, many of us are living very comfortable lives in comparison to the living standards that they had back in the day.

What I am saying though is that our work ethnic and most importantly, our sense of fulfillment and purpose when doing hard work has gone down by a very considerable amount between the caveman times and now.

So, if we limit the variables to only on the changes in our work ethic, what has really changed between then and now that we face these negative symptoms of burnout, anxiety, frustration, and irritation that are now very prevalent in modern times?

The Insight That Can Help You Work Even Harder

In order to dive deeper into this topic, let’s try to identify the factors that has caused us to have this lack of work ethic. The best way to explain this concept is to look at the Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs.

The chart is supposed to symbolize the varying levels of fulfillment that every human being needs, the lower levels emphasize the most fundamental and basic needs while the higher levels emphasize the peak of human satisfaction and fulfillment. The lower levels need to be taken care of first before ascending on to the higher levels. So based of off this chart, we can assume that your work or job occupation would cover multiple levels in this chart. But, in order for you feel a sense of fulfillment and purpose in your work, that need to have to align closer to the highest level, self-actualization.

Hopefully you're starting to connect the dots now in a similar way that I have 😎 

Now that we understand where job occupation lies in this chart, it is now very easy to understand the underlying problem in why we experience so much burnout and mental fatigue. So, the question that we asked in the beginning was, what makes it so that work is tiring at some times but can be also very fulfilling and purposeful at other times?

The answer would lie if the conditions of the lower-level needs were actually met first in order to feel fulfillment while working towards a goal. I like to think of it as this, picture the success of being able to work hard towards a craft and feeling a sense of fulfillment as the highest level in the chart of human needs. But, if we want to get to that state, there must some sort of a baseline that must be passed to get there.

The baseline that I’m talking about lies in the fundamental human needs, how can we really expect to do purposeful work if our mental health is in a decaying state, our physical health is at an all-time low, we don’t eat the right foods, we don’t sleep enough, we don’t have the same level of social connections like we used to. Most of these problems are all symptoms of the negative effects in living in modern day times where comfort and isolation are a very prominent problem amongst many people. If we can’t meet this baseline of fundamental human needs, then we can’t expect to fulfil the higher-level needs.

I’m not saying that modern life is terrible, and we should just go back to the primitive days, but it can be beneficial to take what you’ve learnt in this post and to identify the steps necessary to fulfil our essential needs. Luckily, I can give you a simple series of actionable steps that can help you meet these needs and get yourself on the trajectory of self-actualization and fulfillment. All of these steps will be taken more in depth in future posts.

Actionable Steps; Physiological Needs:

Nutrition:

Follow a nutritious diet of protein to encourage recovery and build new muscle tissue, carbs to get you energized throughout the day, fruits, and vegetables to hit your micronutrients. Drink a range of 4 to 8 bottles of water per day depending on your bodyweight. If you want to lose weight, maintain weight, or gain weight, you can calculate your caloric Maintenace through using this calorie calculator. Plug in your details and you should see a set calorie range to aim for your specific goal.

Calorie Calculator 

Exercise:

It is recommended that you perform at least 3 days’ worth of vigorous exercise per week, you can pick either resistance training or endurance training depending on your specific goals for yourself. It is important to note that your nutrition should be on point in order to fuel your body to perform these tasks and to recover properly.

Mindfulness:

Mindfulness can be beneficial to keep you in the present moment. To start off, either set a timer for 5 minutes or you go on your phone and search for a guided meditation app that will log your sessions for you. My app that I recommend the most is Medito. During the session, your goal is to go through the cycle of meditation completely between bouts.

The cycle starts off as you trying to maintain yourself in the present moment by clearing all thoughts and just focusing on your breath, then you begin to be less present and your mind starts to drift off to random thoughts, you catch yourself drifting off and then try to keep yourself in the present moment by clearing all thoughts again. Repeat this cycle until the timer is up. The goal is to be as present during the session as possible though in the beginning, this will likely not happen. Progressive overload over time from 5 minutes to however long you want if you feel mentally capable of doing so.

Nature:

Humans were born to be outside for the majority of the day, yet many of us, including myself, stay in cubicles all day long. Try to dedicate at least 30 minutes every day to take a walk outside or to do any other activity outside. For me I usually go to set up my gym rings to hit a workout outside, it’s a quite a good investment if you don’t have equipment or space inside your house. Try it for a couple of weeks and you’ll notice that your mental health is drastically improving as time goes on. It’s quite difficult to be anxious and irritated when you're going on a walk, run, or even climbing a tree.

This is a very simplistic but beginner friendly guide for those who want to get the ball rolling in improving their mental and physical health or for people who are currently trying to get out a rut. I wrote it in a way so that it is down to its bare bones and easy to follow, be on the outlook for more advanced guides where I discuss heavily in depth on certain topics related to increasing your mental and physical performance to unimaginable levels (Becoming your best self).

I got quite a lot of information to say based on experience, research, and past experiments that I’ve done throughout my journey so far so don’t forget to stick around to find out about more in future posts.

Author’s Notes:

Well, I hoped you’ve enjoyed this new edition of the Peak Performance Newsletter, I had a lot of enjoyment and fulfillment making this one and I hope that you were able to leave with some valuable information that you can use for your own journey to self-betterment.

I know that I said that I’ll try to be more consistent with my posts last time, but I took too long to brainstorm an idea for this post and thus it was delayed. I’ll refrain from making statements that I can’t back up for next time 😅 I’m pretty sure as you can see here, I really went overboard when it came to the duration of this post once again. I try to keep my posts as concise as possible, but I end up being too passionate while I’m writing and end up writing an extra 1000 more words than I needed to.

I don’t necessarily view it as a bad thing since I try to target an audience of people who enjoy more advanced, in-depth posts like this one and are quite far in their self-development journey. That can lead to higher quality readers and more high-quality discussions in the future, so I hope that you enjoy this long format of posts as much I did writing them.

Again, I try to keep you updated and informed whenever I post again, but the best way to get notified of that is to subscribe to this newsletter so that you can stay up to date with the newest posts. If you’ve enjoyed it, hated it, or want to give me feedback, feel free to in the comments and share it to people who might find it helpful.

Until next time, peace 😎✌