In my last newsletter, I referenced American neurologist George Beard’s 1881 book which introduced the first of its kind discussion of a mental illness, which he called ‘neurasthenia’. His book, available for free online, lists the reasons for the rise in ‘nervousness’ as he called it, which included technological innovations such as steam power and telegraph. What I didn’t mention in my last newsletter was that he also attributed ‘mental activity of women’ as a cause. I had a bit of a reaction to what I assumed was a sexist comment when I first read it. It took me a couple of days to sort through my own bias, write about it and discuss my reaction with my editor. Here’s what I have written about it all, the last three paras are new since the previous newsletter:
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The technology and digital revolution of the past few decades have only worsened the action bias tendency. There’s so much more we ‘know’ and have to sift through. New information is coming at us faster than ever before causing stress and anxiety. Back in 1881, American Neurologist George Beard wrote a book titled ‘American Nervousness, its Causes and Consequences’. In it he observed an increase in a class of functional diseases of the nervous system. He wrote, ‘The chief and primary cause of this development and very rapid increase of nervousness is modern civilization, which is distinguished from the ancient by these characteristics: steam power, the periodical press, the telegraph, the sciences’. He was referring to, ‘neurasthenia’, a term he coined to describe the earliest recognized form of mental illness due to emotional disturbances and nervousness. This class of diseases ’seem to have first taken root under an American sky whence their seed is being distributed [to rest of the world]’.
Fast forward to the present day, there are any number of studies pointing to increase in stress and anxiety in students and adults alike, thanks to the rise of something called ‘the internet''. In a study, entrepreneurs reported a higher likelihood compared to non entrepreneurs of mental illnesses such as bipolar disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), depression and substance abuse. Studies have also found that manic temperament (tendency to mania) is tied to an ambition for social recognition and dominance. FOMO (fear of missing out), an ubiquitous term in our vocabulary is a very telling indicator of what's making our action bias worse.
Interestingly, Beard refers to another cause of this increase in nervousness: ‘the mental activity of women’. As I was reading his book, it was remarkable to watch my own biases play out in me when I first read this phrase. What?! In a few micro seconds, my mind created these thoughts ‘Can I quote someone who said that? Can I ignore this sexist comment and quote what’s relevant?’ I was working off deadlines and weekly commitments to my book editor and I needed to move on (take action!) if this wasn’t usable. But since I am writing about the downside of action bias, I have no choice but to drink my own kool aid. So I searched some more, what could he mean? Once I gave it time, a few things became clear.
By the time Beard wrote this book, the country had experienced a variety of social movements and uprisings of sorts: the the civil war had ended in the 1860s in the United States, the women’s suffrage movement had been building up for quite a few years and decades. Beard seems to have chosen to mention the women’s movement as a major stressor to the then social norm, even though there were other disruptions going on. The women’s movement was challenging the norm of white-male dominance, which was stressful enough to increase ‘neurasthenia’ in that society.
Is it not a remarkable co-incidence that we are experiencing something similar in the form of the social justice, diversity and inclusion movement in the United States, which is in turn causing a ripple effect across the world and acting as a major stressor for all people, regardless of gender, race and ethnicity? You only have to take one look at social media posts and other commentary across platforms to get a glimpse of how much we are on the edge of our teeth as seismic socio-economic shifts occur all around us. I don’t have to look far, I only have to look at my own first reaction to what he wrote. All this has the effect of exacerbating our action bias, our tendency to react, sometimes irrationally.
Book Stuff
A little over a week ago, in a meeting with my editor, I shared my plan to finish the manuscript early and go back to add visuals etc before shipping to New Degree Press. He started his response with ‘Or… you could…’. He shared the story of author Stephen King who, when done with the first draft of manuscript, puts it down and walks away from it for a month. He doesn’t look at it, doesn’t touch it. It was a massive relief just hearing about that! I love the book and the ‘flow’ I go into when writing for hours and days at a time. But the idea of putting it away for a bit sounded divine, the book seemed to have ‘taken over’. So I wrapped up the final pieces over the next few days and called it a day.
I then felt something that I couldn’t describe in words. It wasn’t quite ‘tired’, I wasn’t tired, neither mentally, nor physically. It wasn’t sadness either. Nor elation or a sense of accomplishment. None of that. What was it? As I searched, the only word that came close to describing the feeling was ‘spent’. I felt spent. Utterly and completely. It was a flatline of emotion, a kind of nothing. I looked into my writing history: I had written a 38k word manuscript in about 3.5 months. Not including other content I wrote which hasn’t made it into the manuscript yet. That makes it about 50k words in that time. No wonder I felt spent!
Well, that feeling lasted a day or so. Life moves on. I now have a memory of yet another ‘moment’ while on this journey. The image is all the spaces where the manuscript has been written, across home in NJ and Mumbai when I was visiting earlier this year.
Here’s the table of contents. All but chapter 11 are first draft complete. Chapter 11 is meant to be a summary takeaway of sorts, I will write it towards the very end.
I would love to hear your thoughts on the table of contents, what does it read like? What do you now expect the book to be about?
Foreword
Part 1 How we got here
Chapter 1 Introduction
Chapter 2: Ambition, Power and The Action Figure
Chapter 3 The Rise (and Irony) of the Self Awareness Era
Part 2 Dealing with Obstacles to Mastering Action
Chapter 4: The Default Action Playbook
Chapter 5: Paradox of Goal Setting
Chapter 6: The Cause and Effect Fallacy (Or the randomness effect)
Part 3 Developing a Practice of Mastering Action
Chapter 7 Power of Silence
Chapter 8 Day Dreaming and Mind Wandering as Creative Tools
Chapter 9: Being Lazy, Procrastinating and other mindsets
Part 4 Conclusion
Chapter 10 The Many Shades of Color
Chapter 11: The Practice of Mastering Action