Rabbit Holes 🕳️ #71

From the 80-hour workweek to modernization's effect on mental health, calling people forward (instead of out), breaking together, and being greedy vs. being lazy

Last week, we hit a new milestone and reached 3,000 subscribers. 🥳 This week, we’re actually already above 3,100. So, we’re on a fast track to 4k and more soon! 😉

I also reached 6k+ followers on LinkedIn and sent out a short celebration post there which explains that while I look and value these standard metrics, I do try to prioritize a different metric much more: resonance.

Before we get into this week’s Rabbit Holes, I want to thank you all so much for supporting my work! It’s hard to put into words how much I appreciate your support! 😊

Thank you very much! 🙏

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THIS WEEK → 📆 The 80-Hour Workweek 😥 Modernization & Mental Health 🌅 Calling People Forward➕ Breaking Together 🚿 Being Greedy vs. Being Lazy

Rabbit Holes 🕳️

How can we build a better world? As always, here are three perspective-shifting ideas to rewild your mind and help you create a better world, plus some extras below. Enjoy!

#1 📆 The 80-Hour Workweek

The economy is so strange... We’ve had lots of gains in productivity over the last few decades, lots of economic growth, the stock market is at an all-time high, we own more stuff shit than ever, AI is supposed to supercharge productivity like nothing before….but transforming all those “gains” into more free time is still seen as “crazy”, “radical”, “ridiculous”, “lazy”, or “parasitic”. I’ve already written about a solution to this: shifting from a productivity mindset to aliveness.

“There have been massive gains in productivity over the past century.

So why are people still working so hard for so long?

Output per worker increased by almost 300% between 1950 and 2018 in the U.S. The standard American workweek, meanwhile, has remained unchanged, at about 40 hours. […] But shouldn’t more productive work be rewarded with more time free from work? […]

Since the 1970s, inflation-adjusted wages haven’t risen with economic growth. In many households that include married or partnered couples, a single wage earner has been replaced by two earners, both of whom find themselves working at least 40 hours per week.

It’s almost as if the 40-hour week has been replaced by an 80-hour week – at least in terms of hours worked per household. [emphasis added]

Who has time to raise kids? Who can afford them? It’s no wonder the birth rate has declined. […]

For decades, the amount of work we do has been talked about as “just the way things are” – an inevitability, almost. It doesn’t seem possible for society to take a different tack and, like flipping a switch, work less. […]

It doesn’t help that elected leaders continue to insist that well-being be measured mostly by economic growth, and when the U.S. media breathlessly reports quarterly economic growth data, with increases deemed “good” and decreases deemed “bad.”

Why shouldn’t free time and its benefits be included in the equation? Why aren’t figures on the social costs of unlimited growth publicized? Does it even matter that the Dow Jones Industrial Average has doubled in less than a decade when economic security is so fragile and so many people are overstressed?

The idea that stratospheric increases in productivity can allow for more time for life is not simply a romantic or sentimental idea. Keynes viewed it as entirely reasonable.

Opportunities like the one that led to the 40-hour workweek in the 1930s rarely appear. But some sort of paradigm shift is urgently needed.”

» The Conversation | Why is free time so elusive? by Gary Cross

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#2 😥 Modernization & Mental Health

I came across this overview of a few recent reports, which basically support some of the topics and theories I’ve written about in this newsletter. Namely the negative effects of our current concept of modernity (or the ‘good life’, prosperity, thriving), digitalization, ultra-processed foods, and lack of community or family bonds on mental health. It all starts with an insight that less “developed” countries might have better mental health.

"If “modernization” is harming our minds as Thiagarajan suspects, what exactly is doing the damage? “The Global Mind Project allows for very quick understanding at a very large scale, which has not been possible before,” said Thiagarajan.

“Greater wealth and economic development does not necessarily lead to greater mental wellbeing, but instead can lead to consumption patterns and a fraying of social bonds that are detrimental to our ability to thrive,” the report cautions. [...]

The problems: Smartphones, ultra-processed foods, and crumbling families

There’s a theory going around that, as former neuroscientist and author Erik Hoel put it, the modern world was invented in 2012. For social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, 2012 also marks the beginning of the teen mental illness epidemic.

Findings across the four years of the MHQ agree. Prior to 2010, young people tended to top surveys of happiness, mood, and outlook. But from 2019 until this year’s report, the most persistent trend observed has been declining mental well-being across the “internet-enabled” youth (because the survey requires internet access) of every country measured, from Africa to Asia, Europe to the Americas. […]

According to the Global Mind Project’s report on smartphone use in May, the smartphone hypothesis — which has been advocated for by psychologists like Jean Twenge — holds up. “The younger you get your smartphone, the worse off you are as an adult,” said Thiagarajan.

The more you break down the demographics, the more you find that the consequences of smartphone use are concentrated on young females. But looking at another potential causal factor they recently published on, the consumption of ultra-processed foods, those effects are universal across all demographics. “It affects everything, every aspect of mental functioning,” said Thiagarajan. […]

Even after trying to control for the indirect effects of exercise frequency or income, they found that those who eat UPFs several times a day have a threefold increased risk for serious mental health issues. […] “ultra-processed foods seem to account for at least a third of the global burden of mental health that we see.”

The last culprit she singled out was family relationships. And yes, there’s a report for that too, which finds the breakdown of family relationships across the modern world as a major factor in the decline of youth mental well-being. Families with less exposure to the institutions and technologies of modernity, the report argues, tend to have stronger and more numerous family bonds, which tracks closely with better mental well-being.

Thiagarajan explained how when they got their first MHQ results, they wondered why countries like Venezuela and Tanzania came out on top. “But it’s these factors,” she said. “They can’t afford all the westernized ultra-processed foods so they don’t import them. They don’t give smartphones to their kids so young. And they have large families that stay together.”

» Vox | The world’s mental health is in rough shape — and not getting any better, a new report finds by Oshan Jarow

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#3 🌅 Calling People Forward (Instead of Out)

This is a great approach when it comes to change-making – especially change communication and strategy. And it aligns with the idea of a dire need for enjoyable, positive visions of the future. Instead of calling people out, how can you invite people to be something greater?

“In today’s culture, calling out means publicly naming a wrong, an infraction, or a mistake; calling in means naming it privately. The problem with either approach is that both typically get infused with shame, blame, and guilt. It’s well documented in studies in the fields of psychology, anthropology, sociology, and even neuroscience that shaming, blaming, and guilting someone shuts down the center of their brain responsible for learning and growth.

Thus, regardless of how much a person meditates or prays, or how emotionally or spiritually evolved they believe they are, if you use the tactics of shame, blame, and guilt, it blocks the ability for the person you are speaking with to actively listen, it stunts the capacity for them to learn, and it eliminates any opportunity for growth. […]

Calling forward is a model of communication that we coined several years ago that flips the idea of “calling out” and “calling in” on its head, turning it into something more effective for bringing people together and ending racism. While “calling out” or “calling in” is fighting against what someone did wrong, calling forward is an invitation to be something greater. While calling out/in is fighting against what we hate, calling forward is building upon what we love. Calling forward is inviting people into a greater state of integration and evolution. Calling forward opens the door to real transformation, and we’ve found that the outcome—although not always immediate—is often surprising. […]

The Ten Essential Steps to Calling Forward [for all ten steps, read the entire article]

As with any conversation, you don’t have control of what the other person does or says, but you do have control over yourself—how you choose to respond and how you show up. These ten steps will prepare you for the best possible outcome. […]

Step 1: Center in Your Vision

Calling forward is, more than anything, an invitation to something greater. But you can’t invite someone forward if you have no idea where forward is or what you are moving toward. […] You must approach this conversation from a place of inviting them forward into something you love, not just as an opportunity to call out/in what they did wrong. […]

Step 3: Imagine That This Person’s Actions Were Coming from a Place of Care, Concern, and Love

[…] Here’s a trick: Ask yourself, “If I forced myself to assume this person’s actions were coming from a place of care, concern, and love, then why might they have done what they’ve done?” Most people are not intentionally trying to cause harm. […]

Step 6: Create a Space of Connection and Compassion

Creating connection and compassion starts with you being vulnerable. Vulnerability is not weakness—it’s your greatest strength, especially in these kinds of conversations. How do you build a space of vulnerability and connection? You begin with sharing your emotions. […]

Step 7: Paint the Picture of the Vision

Imagine trying to invite someone to a beautiful vacation on a tropical island but only showing them pictures of a volcano erupting or crime, destruction, and violence among the locals. This is what many of us do when we call someone out/in. Don’t focus the bulk of the conversation on everything they did “wrong.” Instead, describe the world they could be living in with you if they chose different actions.”

» NPQ | Calling People Forward Instead of Out: Ten Essential Steps by Justin Michael Williams & Shelly Tygielski

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➕ Extras

“The collapse of modern societies has already begun. That is the conclusion of two years of research by the interdisciplinary team behind Breaking Together. How did it come to this? Because monetary systems caused us to harm each other and nature to such an extent it broke the foundations of our societies. So what can we do? This book describes people allowing the full pain of our predicament to liberate them into living more courageously and creatively. They demonstrate we can be breaking together, not apart, in this era of collapse.”
Breaking Together: A Freedom-Loving Response To Collapse by Jem Bendell

“Desmond shows that the American economy has increasingly allowed business to enjoy power to coerce people into earning less for doing more. […] “Capitalism is inherently about workers trying to get as much, and owners trying to give as little, as possible,” Desmond observes – and poverty endures because the first group has lost many battles against the second.”
Poverty, By America by Matthew Desmond

“Free time, one of life’s most precious things, often feels unfulfilling. But why? And how did leisure activities transition from strolling in the park for hours to “doomscrolling” on social media for thirty minutes? […] Free Time offers a broad historical explanation of why our affluent society does not afford more time away from work and why that time is often unsatisfying.”
Free Time: The History Of An Elusive Ideal by Gary Cross

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🚿 Shower Thoughts

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That’s it for this week’s Rabbit Holes issue!

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Thomas