There is a kind of stress that is healthy.

Recently, my neighbour had an accident and broke his ankle. His wife rushed him to A&E, fully expecting him to be laid up in hospital for a few weeks, with his leg raised. Not a bit of it. He was discharged that night with a protective boot and counselled to exercise it moderately for the next few weeks. We remember that moderate stress strengthens our bones and muscles, and bed rest can be harmful in the long term.

I came across this concept when reading Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Antifragility, where he explores the idea of always protecting ourselves from stress is a bad idea. This is called hormesis, good stress, stress that strengthens and improves performance over the longer term.

However, good stress, hormesis, is not chronic. It is not always applied. And it is moderate, like my neighbour’s rehabilitation plan for his ankle; it involved initially short periods of gentle walking that lengthened over time.

When it comes to our own drivers of internal haste, they can present themselves as pressure on us to produce as soon as we can. Over time, this kind of stress can harm us. It becomes more dangerous to us because at first we do not see the harm it is doing to us. And when we finally do, we might see no alternative. That is the deception.

A dear friend said recently of the Unburdened journalling practices, “This feels too slow.”

I know why she might say that. It feels like following these practices will us further behind, at best, and be irrelevant at worst. Yet, I wonder if this reaction might be a sign of, say, our unhelpful addiction to the dopamine released by our hustle culture. In contrast, the slow way, the deep way, might appear at first tedious and boring.

That is, until we detoxify ourselves of the frequent exciting stimuli around us. Going slow and deep may be the only healthy way to rid ourselves of this kind of dopamine addiction; an addiction that will ultimately ruin us.

As we begin this journey, going slow and deep can scream fruitlessness, boredom and irrelevance.

Yet, when it is developed as a habit we find it frees us. If we allow the deep roots of deep work to develop below the visible surface of our lives, it ultimately allows something fruitful to emerge that yields abundance.

This encourages me, as I see this in many of the leadership of the best projects.

Once upon a time there was an American company and a Japanese one, who both leased near-identical plots in a new industrial estate in Europe. The US firm got to work straightaway, having had experience of setting up a similar warehouse before. “How hard could it be?” senior management asked. They soon ran into problems, though, with the subsoil and foundations. It was an expensive mistake and caused significant delays. Yet there was activity on the ground. They appeared busy.

Meanwhile, nothing seems to happen for months on the plot bought by the Japanese company. Yet invisibly, as it were, a lot was happening. Within the walls of their headquarters, they gave themselves the grace of long and courteous conversations about the project, analysing it in detail. When work did finally commence on their plot, it was completed very quickly and successfully; in fact months before the American warehouse was operational.

Maybe the hormesis, the good stress, for our soul is learning to deny false urgency. That way we become less manipulated by the world, walking through it with more freedom, not allowing ourselves to be alarmed or hustled by the urgent calls all around us.

Often this begins by courageously saying no. We can say no to others as the truly important becomes clearer to us in our secret place. Thus we can create space to create the truly remarkable.

If you would like to know more, hop onto our unique programme–the Unburdened Programme–that starts next week, where you will learn the slow way, the deep way:

See you there,

Patrick