Be What? Work How Much?! Play?! Are You Serious?!

Welcome to Be Smart. Work Less. Play More.

Welcome, Willkommen, Witam, Haere Mai!

This is Be Smart. Work Less. Play More. - a modern fusion of top-notch wellbeing science and Zen Buddhism for the benefit of your every day.

No, this is not going to be just some science mambo jambo with lots of references and pure factual discussions. Although I am a huge enjoyer of applied scientific discourse, I do not want to just be a “science translator”. Nowadays I am quite convinced that we need something different to raise our populational wellbeing status. To do more than just educate, inform or reach people with all the preventive health and wellbeing goodness, I believe we are lacking not the tools (we have had those for 10+ years!), but

something more.

Maybe something more meaningful, less defined, personal, but at the same time also universal. I often address a “populational” health epidemic, so it somewhat has to be more than an n=1 situation. Something that is definitely not based on gimmicks like external motivation through “gAmifiCATion” (proven over and over again to not deliver any long-term adherence) – damn, I do truly despise that stuff (and I am a gamer by heart!). And it is certainly also not going to be the new “smart” device that will save us from all the preventable illness (I am also a tech nerd!).

Honestly, I do not know what it is, but I am willing to embark on a completely new journey, blank the canvas, and start thinking, discussing and applying completely unprecedented and eccentric methods.

Thus, in recent years I embarked (believe it or not, by accident, luck or sheer randomness) on a more philosophical and spiritual dive into the investigation of

“Why are our preventive health and wellbeing methods, processes and systems failing? What else can we do?”.

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If you wonder about this too all the time, and would like to join my journey into the depths of this unknown, please consider subscribing - after all “together is better”:

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No (!), that does not mean my writing here will require any religious connection, understanding or even liking/preference whatsoever. Although it would be interesting to read from you if you are following any spiritual or philosophical pathways!

Instead I want to dabble, play and discuss the idea that maybe our spiritual health is somewhat of a “glue” that can keep the 4 other areas of our wellbeing together – or even better, like concrete, that builds it up and supports it in the long-term. After all, there was this short period of almost globally shared belief that what we do every day, how we do it, where we do it, what we expect from it and what is in exchange expected from us, is completely messed up. Yes, yes, I am mainly talking about work – it does take up like > 60% of our awake time after all.

Simon Sinek’s “Start with Why” (1) was trending everywhere and with everything, people did a lot of introspection, reflection, and they were OPEN ABOUT IT! Like, talking, chatting, speaking and posting about it! Of course it slowly evaporated while most of us got sucked back into the regular, and correctly criticised for being extremely outdated, systems of our every day life. I would love though if we could continue these thoughts, conversations, as well as behavioural changes to figure out how we can do daily life better for ourselves.

At least that is what I want Be Smart. Work Less. Play More. to be; which means that this might not resonate with you. That is totally fine, especially if you subscribed before I finally settled on this area for my writing. Of course, I would love if you at least gave this “welcome” article here a chance, but if this is simply not for you, scroll all the way down to the bottom of this article to find the unsubscribe button.

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Spirituality and wellbeing simplified?! No.

Let me be quite clear here (before you head into this section and get slightly confused):

I am definitely not a fan of everything about our health and wellbeing becoming simplified.

This is a baffling trend in the last 2 decades of public health recommendations, guidelines and whole methodological practices becoming so superficial that they partly do not work at all anymore (you might be able to tell that there will be heaps of articles in that direction too – and about what you can do instead). I believe we rather need more professional, detailed and specific help – and no, “just” pretending that wellbeing can be anything you personally perceive as wellbeing, and that “mental” wellbeing is most important nowadays (because it is trendy), is not the way either.

Over the years I developed this “motto” for my own wellbeing:

Be Smart. Work Less. Play more.

It did not just come as one of those sweet moments of sheer language brilliance, particularly as a third language English non-native speaker this is highly unlikely. As you will find in my about section, I spent almost 15 years now in the health and wellbeing area, with all the bells and whistles in experience, exposure and knowledge. This motto is more or less the result of all my experiences – and I used to believe that it just is a fitting summary statement of how to be “more well” in an average day for average human beings. Well, I reread this and it obviously does not sound very enticing, does it? Who the hell wants to be average?!

Here is the crux if you like so: if we paid a bit more daily attention to the core messages from that motto, I think we are more than likely to become way above average.

At least our wellbeing would.

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Do you enjoy what you are reading? Like, is this in anyway connecting with you or maybe even being useful? If yes, please hit that ❤️ button so that it increases the likelihood of other people experiencing it too! Thank you!

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I am so convinced about this that I will happily take on any organisation, team, business or individual for teaching and mentoring for 1 to 2 months, and if my approach, support and help does not lead to any changes in your life, you pay nothing. Hell, I will likely pay you for critical feedback to understand why you think it did not work for you.

Yeah, I know, I know – this sounds like average-level marketeer sales pitch. It is not.

If so many of us are struggling with

just dealing with ourselves,

our bodies, minds, emotions, feelings,

social structures,

our believes, values and identity,

and everything else that should, and absolutely can be supported, or even prevented from getting worse, then no wonder we all just feel average (or below!), right?

Well, I have seen this in business individuals/teams, elite level sports individuals/teams, and across all ages and backgrounds of every day humans that are just trying to get by. Plus, in hindsight, and with all that wisdom and expertise now collected over the years, I think it comes down for many people to:

Not being very smart, informed and intellectual about our actions.

Working, in terms of time spent at their main work commitment, way too much.

A lack of playing, enjoying, maybe even thinking, or just doing nothing (yes, I wrote lack of – not just “not enough”).

The TLDR of that for me is Be Smart. Work Less. Play More.

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Summa summarum, as much as it sounds and reads like something mad lit, I obviously do not believe that another platitude is necessary to help us with various aspects of our wellbeing.

What I do believe though, at this moment in time, is that maybe for some people this could be a great entry point into “figuring themselves out”, learning who they are, what matters to them, and then finally being able to do something about the things they truly wish to do! To me personally it was (!) for a time almost like an informal, modern and quirky take on “Zen” in our hectic, inflexible and stressed world. This was when I had no idea about what Zen truly is.

Until I did by chance stumble across a book about Zen Buddhism (“Nothing Special: Living Zen” by Charlotte Joko Beck (2)). It was one of those occasions where a bookshop (or was it library?) was giving away free books at the entry; even though I will never understand how that really works. Being in the middle of a career and identity crisis, I picked it up, showed my wife who knew I was looking into some “platonic” Zen things and said “Karma, hey?”. That book still mystifies me until today – and it will likely keep doing that for a long time. “Always keep the beginner’s mind” is after all one Zen koan, so that is a good thing I got going here, haha!

Ironically, by now I think we have taken lots of “Zen” aspects and just simplified them into our modernised world so much that it has become just another weirdly twisted spiritual thing from the “east” that is hip and trendy. Of course it is mostly so “butchered” that it avoids all the in-depth self-reflections, adherence to specific practices, or it ignores the fact that there is a whole “spirituality” or even religious aspect about this.

Thus, I do not at all entertain or like the idea anymore that my motto Be Smart. Work Less. Play More. is some sort of modern simplification and summary of “being Zen”. I want to actively avoid becoming just another of these people who are “butchering” Zen Buddhism for simplifications and some weird journey for finding daily “peace”.

But its my motto. I like it. It is a motto I really truly believe in from all directions of my life.

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So what do I mean by it?

I will write comprehensive articles on each part, but here is an abbreviated and hopefully still coherent rundown:

Be Smart.

Experienced practitioners of Zen Buddhism, or even all those who simply spend more time considering their spirituality, might instantly shut me down here – mainly because one Zen koan more or less goes like this:

Don’t wield logic.

(I am currently reading and studying a lovely little book by Shunmyō Masuno & Allison Markin Powell “Don’t Worry” (3), and I find myself guilty of wielding logic a lot!).

Give me a chance to explain - I think that we are nowadays, more than ever, dealing with two types of smart-”ness”:

street smart, and intellectual smart.

It is glaringly obvious that, as with everything in life (right?!), balance is a good operating procedure here. Yet, I cannot lose the feeling that everything has become about being street smart.

Connections, buddies, meetings, conferences, “who you know, not what you know” , office politics, submitting and pandering to your managers or supervisors every whim and wish, micro-managing all your relationships and socials so that you benefit the most out of all the interactions (maybe even professionally!), and so on.

The sad thing here is that whenever you ask for, especially professional or career, advice, you usually get bombarded with something that is more likely to be considered street smart than anything else. Then if you are like me and you kind of want to bring that up, you end up hearing “well, you know, it is what it is” (4) – as much as the beginner Zen Buddhist likes seeing this, it is tough to process that this is really it in the “modern and advanced” world.

On the flip side, I think intellectual smart has lost significance, relevance and value – and at least in the health and wellbeing world it shows:

Our population health and fitness is on a continuous decline for plus/minus 20 years (5–8).

Chronic diseases and mental sicknesses that are mostly related to, what is so lovingly (and badly) called our “lifestyles”, are mostly completely preventable (9–13).

About 80% of all deaths in most first world countries are due to these preventable diseases (14).

The simplified and diluted versions of proper preventive health methods that you have likely heard (e.g. walk 2x per week 10 minutes) are clearly not working, and represent nothing more than literal begging of the experts for you to please, for the love of God, Buddha, Mohamed, Allah or anyone else, do “anything but nothing” (15,16).

Oh, and most countries have a critical shortage of health professionals specialising in what I call “sick care” (e.g. nurses, doctors, surgeons) (17–20).

I think that when it comes to anything that is related to dealing with our human bodies and behaviours (e.g. physiology, neurology, psychology, sociology) we have to at least consider the knowledge, facts and available information as a basic or fundamental starting point.

But we do not.

Why?

I wish I knew exactly why, but I can only assume, guess and discern.

It seems that the general intellectual status and value of that intellectual smartness is getting progressively worse. So bad, that even popular Twitch streamers have made content out of teacher videos posted on X/Twitter about how far “behind” their students are in their education in comparison to what they could be (21).

The meme “They can’t read.” is not a meme anymore (22,23). It is reality. I wish I was not typing this, but I think we have finally arrived in the “Idiocracy” timeline (24).

Thus, I want my writing to install some new found type of awe and wonder about science, facts, and their application in the real world – read: in our daily lives! As I have written in my own about section, it is essential to understand that we have all the knowledge and tools to prevent and deal with every single health and wellbeing problem.

Maybe my interpretation of that koan would go something like this:

Do not wield logic against others. Explore your own wisdom with it.

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Work Less.

We are at a peculiar state of our work conditions:

On one side we work notably way too much.

On the other side we work way too little.

Your likely reaction: wait, what?!

Let me, in a contrarian way to what I just wrote about this in a previous section, try to make this more intelligible and slightly more simplified.

Our current work system is based on time, and it comes from the industrial age when the goal was to split the work force into 3 shifts of 8 hours each (originally, there were no shifts!). But work is never just the same work, while particularly mental work requires a whole different set of cognitive activity. Mental work cannot be done for 8 hours or more per day – it is not possible to be mentally productive throughout that many hours (25–28).

This is how and why we work too much.

There are heaps of advanced work wellbeing methods to deal with it, and I will in coming articles address all of them (separately or together, who knows!).

Now, what about working too little?

We do a lot useless, unnecessary, unfocused, non-specific, and simply, time wasting work tasks.

So much so that even average work contracts do outline like 10+ different responsibilities, and quite often without any accountability measures for time allocations or percentage distributions (29,30). It is just dangerous, damaging, and highly unproductive (which is really what all business only care about). It is at the core of how and why our work has become so mentally and emotionally draining and harmful.

In the book “Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World” Carl Newport (31) highlights how a lot of the brightest minds of our time have often fully dedicated themselves to just doing one thing. We love looking up to the Einstein’s, the da Vinci’s or minds of more recent decades like Steve Job’s or whoever you fancy, all while completely ignoring some of the outstandingly contemporary methods they used to do their work.

We are working too little on things that matter, with too little time, and especially with little to no focus. It needs to change for us to be “well” as humans.

I like to call it defractionalisation of responsibilities.

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Play More.

To finish my trifecta, we go into territory that will be known to some as “fun”. Or at least anything that goes into the direction of playing, enjoying yourself for the sake of it (and not some pretentious output), or even, *gasp*, just doing nothing.

Some of the naysayers will now come out and bombard their thinking process immediately with:

“But all those young generations are so lazy on their phones!”

“So many people do not want to do hard work anymore – we need them to work more, not have fun!”

“Them video games are frying our children’s brains, and even the newer generation adults are getting addicted to it!”

“Work does not always need to be your fulfillment in life, it can just be work without fun.”

The last one I can somewhat even agree with, haha.

Otherwise, it is relatively confusing to me how play, fun and doing nothing has still got such a bad rep. Thinking itself is also considered in this category, despite us needing to spent more time just thinking, problem solving, and planning far ahead (foresight for the win!) in many industries where we are seeing instead a lot of half-assed projects being executed asap. This comes additionally with a plethora of benefits that have been ad nauseam proven for decades.

Whether it is the improved cognitive function and processing abilities that we receive from simple games (32–36), improved problem solving from regularly (weekly!) participating in a variety of games (including, and especially video games!) (37–39), or the incredible boosts we can receive to our mental and/or emotional wellbeing by simply doing nothing (40) - they are all positive for us as human beings. It is becoming so much of a big thing in certain areas that even my local city council here at the end of the world in my little NZ town has hired a specialist (even with a PhD!) that focuses on play across all council levels (41).

Instead of pushing gamification into everything (including our work spaces), we should consider to simply give people more opportunities to do play and/or nothing more often their own way.

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Subscriber benefits

I will always keep my most thought out, insightful (at least from what I believe!), extensive, as well as hopefully discourse provoking articles free. I will be publishing a “Weekly Wellbeing Zest”, where I highlight some of what I consider best-hidden reads of the week for your wellbeing here on Substack. Every then and now I will write more “opinion”-heavy pieces. Oh, and then there is the really cool chat group where we can discuss brainy and dreamy wellbeing stuff! Like, really get into those hard hitting questions that truly matter, but we somehow never talk with anyone about it – and yes, it can be heaps easier to do that with random people we do not know at all!

Benefits for free subscribers:

• “Inspiring Insights”: In-depth articles about Zen-Wellbeing fusion

• “Weekly Wellbeing Zest” about the most unrecognised wellbeing articles on Substack

• “Bizarre Beliefs”: Occasional opinion-heavy pieces that give a bit more open look into my broody and eccentric mind, and how I think about health, fitness & wellbeing

• Access to the Be Smart. Work Less. Play More. community chat group

As I am a commitment based person, I want to truly deep dive into this.

“Wenn schon denn schon”

is a German saying which Arnold Schwarzenegger reminded me recently off in his book “Be Useful” (42). Pretty much translates into “When doing something, do it properly”. For those who are interested in the direct translation (because I think they can be quite funny):

“If already, then already”.

Thus, I want to offer additional benefits for paid subscribers at some point in the future, maybe - actually I really do not know if I want to. As I thought I want to follow some good pointers by

Elin Petronella

and

Remy Bazerque

, I will offer for now (and may forever) everything else to free subscribers as well:

Current bonuses for free subscribers:

• “Seasons of Wellbeing”

  → “Zen Zenith”: Interactive articles that will be PRACTICE and INSTRUCTION heavy

  → Comprehensive coaching with me through the comments of each of the “Zen Zenith” articles, as well as topic specific chats

  → Each 2-month long season will focus on ONE aspect of wellbeing

• “The Request” chat where subscribers can ask questions, suggest ideas or just communicating something they are curious about – all of which will (most likely) translate into future articles

• “True Feedback” chat where I demand (muahaha!) from my subscribers to give me their fully transparent feedback (not praise!) - I work best with what most people consider “negative” feedback (more on how that actually is the only form of feedback in future articles!)

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For everyone who got this far down in this article, I would like to share:

This is my 1^st article, it had about 20 different drafts in my head, about 10 on paper, and finally 4 full drafts typed up. It is the first day of 2024, and I am pushing the send/publish button today. I ain’t scared, but got doubts whether I can show up for myself. If you have any similar doubts, please make sure to show up today for yourself in 2024 – whatever that looks like for you.

Now, time to figure out how I can make this my welcome article …

Thank you, and aku mihi (best regards),

Dr Marcin

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References
Feel free to check out references for all my articles in this document.