Summary
Joe explores the progression from stress to burnout to depression, drawing on his experience as a venture capitalist watching CEO after CEO collapse into “the pajama period” after finishing their companies. The mechanism is adrenal fatigue: sustained stress depletes adrenaline, coffee masks the depletion, and eventually the system crashes into depression.
The key insight is that optimizing for productivity without optimizing for downtime is like lifting weights 24/7 — it doesn’t build muscle, it destroys it. Drawing on complex systems theory (Nassim Taleb’s Black Swan, forest fire ecology), Joe argues that any complex system needs oscillation between on and off. Suppressing the downs only creates a bigger crash later.
The video includes two guided exercises. The first helps distinguish between stress that feels enlivening (like playing a sport) and stress that feels horrible (like deadline pressure), revealing that the difference is resistance — good stress is unresisted, bad stress is resisted. The second is a pleasure practice: noticing sensations in the body, taking pleasure in breath, and finding that pleasure is always available as a form of genuine downtime. Joe contrasts this with fake downtime — doomscrolling, binge-watching — which keeps the nervous system stimulated rather than allowing true recovery.
Key Concepts
- Burnout is sustained adrenaline depletion
- Optimize for downtime, not just productivity
- Resisted stress harms, unresisted stress enlivens
- Pleasure is noticing sensations moving in your body
- Recovery time is part of the work
Key Quotes
“If you are solely optimizing for productivity, you are increasing your chances of being depressed and burnt out.”
“The idea that we can have growth or productivity without downtime is an amazing thought process.”
“In any complex system, you need to have the on, the off, the production and the downtime.”
“One of the greatest definitions of pleasure that I’ve ever heard is the noticing of sensations moving in your body.”
“Is this going to be an exercise or is this going to be a lifestyle?”
Transcript
If you are solely optimizing for productivity, you are increasing your chances of being depressed and burnt out. In this video, I sit down with a woman and we explore how working with downtime can increase your productivity and decrease your stress. And along the way, you’ll be invited to do some experiments. When I started my first company, it I I had no idea what I was doing at all. And so, I was incredibly stressed. A friend of mine said, “Hey, you should go to this traditional Chinese medicine person who lived in I think he’d lived in Taiwan for 20 or 30 years and uh so I went to him and I had no idea about traditional Chinese medicine at the time. I thought it was all fooy, but this friend of mine I respected. So I I went and um so he’s giving me the treatment, giving me herbs. And I said, well, if you were a western doctor, what would you do? Mostly as a way to justify like, okay, he knows what he’s doing. And um what he said to me was, “Oh, western doctors, what they would do is you’d be stressed and then you’d start drinking coffee and then you drink a lot of coffee and then eventually you would go into depression and then they would give you anti-depressants.” And this was before, by the way, this was before there were things like anti-anxiety meds. So this was when there was just Prozac coming onto the market. And I was like, “What?” And he said, “Yeah.” So basically the way it works is that your adrenal fatigue happens. you you’re running off adrenaline. You don’t have enough adrenaline. So, you use coffee that amps up your adrenaline and then eventually your adrenals just fail on you and then you get depressed and so then you get anti-depressants. And so, he gave me some herbs that were to help me refurbish or like reinvigorate my adrenals. But it it started to really hit me what’s happening there. Especially as I became a venture capitalist and I saw CEO after CEO when they finished with their company, they became depressed. They would finish the company and then they would I would call it the pajama period. They would sit in their pajamas for two years and do nothing except for beat themselves up for not being relevant. That was like the typical thing. So what I realized in that was that there’s stress and then if the stress is unadressed, if you don’t get the downtime, if you don’t have the parasympathetic nervous system come online enough, you’ll get to burnout and then the burnout will lead to depression. The depression is a whole another story. There’s a whole bunch of things that keep depression in place and there’s things that can create depression in you like a critical voice in your head that’s constantly beating you up so you’re constantly under adrenal attack. So there’s other components to it but they’re highly linked highly linked that it goes from stress to burnout to depression especially if it’s completely unadressed. So if you’re having stress it’s not to say oh stress is bad because it’ll lead to burnout and then it’ll lead to depression. It’s far more about okay, how do I create a stress that’s actually very positive in my life, right? So, it’s a life that is completely unstressful is doesn’t feel productive or meaningful or bountiful and one that is completely stressful doesn’t work either. So, it’s more about how do I balance my stress? And there’s a whole bunch of tools that we we can go into to get to that. But if you don’t recognize that it goes from stress to burnout to depression, you don’t have as much motivation to get off that train and to really address the stress right away while it’s happening. So, in this guided experiment, you’re going to get to feel what it’s like in your body when there’s stress that is helpful and when there’s stress that is harmful to you. And it’s really easy, but the first thing we need to do is just get comfortable. So, close your eyes, relax, get your body comfortable. Perfect. All right. So, what I need you to do with your eyes closed is to just remember a time when you were feeling stress, but it felt great. Maybe you were playing pickle ball or you were playing any sport and rushing to the net or you were in the kitchen and you were inflow cooking and everything was happening at once. And just feel what it was in your body to feel that stress. the stress that felt great, that was enlivening. And now I want you to think of a time when you were feeling stress and it sucked. Maybe you were trying to get work done on time or maybe you were worried about taking a test. Maybe you were scared somebody was going to be upset with you. And really let that land in your body. Really feel what it was like when stress Okay. And now just take a deep breath, do a little shake, and go back to the feeling of stress in your body. That time when stress felt great. Great. Now take another breath, shake it off a little bit, and go back to when stress felt like crap, when it just sucked. And feel that in your body. Great. And notice that when stress feels horrible, it’s really resisted. And when stress feels great, it’s really not resisted. And take that experience and bring it to something that you’re stressed about in your life right now. Whatever it is, maybe it’s about your boss or your husband or your kids, just bring some form of stress that’s in your life right now. Bring it to the to the front. Let yourself feel it. Think about the thoughts that make you feel that stress. And then feel what it’s like not to resist that stress, to allow it to land in your body the same way that you did when stress felt great. I’m dumbfounded that people are optimizing for productivity all the time, but nobody’s optimizing for downtime. I’m also kind of grateful because it makes me a little nauseous. Like, let’s optimize for downtime. But it’s an amazing thing. The idea that we can have growth or productivity without downtime is an amazing thought process. and how we think about our downtime totally changes the way that we transform or the way that we’re productive. So, physically, this is pretty easy to say. Everybody knows that if you’re a weightlifter, you can’t lift weights 24/7 and get ripped. That there are actually forms of lifting weights where you’re lifting like 20 minutes three or four times a week to get a lot of muscles. So, it’s not about how much you lift. It’s also about how you rest and how much you rest. So we know that economically it’s the same thing. There was a guy who wrote a book called the black swan and he talks about how in any complex system that you need to have ups and downs. You have to have this natural up and down. And if you stop, if you use monetary policy to stop the downs, all you’re doing is just creating a bigger down later on. Forest fires are the same way. Complex system. You need to have forest fires come through every once in a while. If you stop them, then when the forest fires do come through, they just burn everything at extremely hot, extremely just totally destructive instead of the forest fires that used to happen every 5 years through the redwood forests. So in any complex system, you need to have the on, the off, and the the the the production and the downtime. And the way that we do downtime totally makes a difference to our productivity and to our ability to transform. Is downtime kind of down? Are you getting dopamine hits by scrolling? Blah blah blah blah blah blah. Or is downtime down like you’re just doing nothing? Are you just sitting on the front porch enjoying the sky? or you downtime is just watching 6 hours of television and you still get all the adrenaline and you still get all the stimulation. So what what’s the downtime? How do you make use of your downtime is an amazing question. And what I noticed is the the optimal downtime luckily is pleasure, is silence, is nothingness, is walking in nature. This is going to be an exercise on feeling pleasure. One of the greatest definitions of pleasure that I’ve ever heard is the noticing of sensations moving in your body. Just that simple thing. Just noticing the sensations moving in your body is pleasure. So, let’s start off. Do whatever you need to do for the next 10, 15, 30 seconds to get yourself comfortable. As a matter of fact, anytime during this whole exercise that you can find a way to make yourself more comfortable, you get to do it. You get to make yourself more and more and more and more and more comfortable. Can be a stretch or a breath in or a state of mind that you want to inhabit, a relaxation, a letting something down, a letting something in, a receiving, whatever. you can do to get a little more comfortable. And we’re going to start this exercise without any movement, just the noticing. So there’s sensations right now happening on the bottom of your feet. You can feel your feet touching something. Maybe a sock, maybe the air, maybe your bed. The soles of your feet, they have sensation. You’re just going to take pleasure in that sensation. Maybe it’s like a little tingle that you can take pleasure in or certain kind of heat, certain kind of movement. You can just take pleasure in that. That’s the job is just take some pleasure in the sensations in the bottom of your feet. And now pick any other part of your body that you want. any part that you want. Maybe it’s an arm or your cheeks, ears, and just take pleasure in them by being aware of the sensation that’s moving and enjoying that sensation. It’s just simply enjoying and taking pleasure in this experience of aliveness. And one of the easiest ways To take pleasure in something is to take pleasure in your breath. We breathe all the time. But if you really pay attention to your breath, you bring your attention to the sensations that are moving in your breath. How much pleasure can you take in the next breath? The fresh air coming in, the old air leaving. The way the oxygen fills your lungs, makes your body tingle. And now you could manipulate your breath to make it even more pleasurable. How deep of a breath is the most pleasurable breath? How much exhale is the most pleasurable exhale? Is it most of the way? Is it all the way? Is it further than all the way? And what’s the sound that you can make on the inhale that creates the most pleasure the most pleasurable sensation? Is it a What’s that inhale sound that creates the most pleasure? Maybe it’s silence. Maybe it’s subtle. And how about that exhale sound that creates just a lot of pleasure in the system? Is it or is it Play with the sounds of the inhale and the exhale and find a way to make each breath even more pleasurable. Keep making that sound. Keep finding a way to breathe that increases the pleasure. And know this is available to you at any time. This level of pleasure is always there, always available with each of your breaths. And you can notice as you’re breathing in and breathing out and taking pleasure, as you’re feeling the sensations in your body move and the pleasure of that, notice that feeling of safety is expanding. There’s a calmness. All happening because you are just taking pleasure in life. There’s a slowing down. There is an aliveness. All happening because you are just taking pleasure in what is happening. The sensations moving, the breath that’s occurring. And you hear people say, “I want to feel good.” Well, here you are feeling good. How good do you want to feel? How long do you want to feel this good? And you might notice a little resistance to the pleasure creeping in some way. Oh, it’s getting long. Oh, this is kind of boring. Or and I want you to take pleasure in that resistance. Oh, that friction, that sensation. Just breathe into it the way you would breathe into a deep tissue massage. Relax around it. And yeah, that’s it. You’re taking pleasure in whatever resistance is there by just opening up and allowing it. And now we’re ready to move. It’s time to move. You’re going to do it in the most pleasurable way. And you’re not going to forget your And you’re going to stretch if that’s what creates the pleasure. Going to gently wiggle. If that creates the pleasure, you’re going to wiggle your fingers and toes. If that creates the pleasure, finding just the most pleasurable speed, you’re just going to keep on moving and keep on breathing and you’re going to keep on expanding into deeper and deeper pleasure. Oh. It’s the simple pleasure of being alive, of being in this body, of being able to feel. Oh, it is so good. It is just so good. If you want to deepen in, just feel any resistance that might be coming up and just go right into it and take pleasure in that resistance. Don’t fight it. Don’t fight it. Just Yeah. Expand into it and around that resistance. How much pleasure can you take in that sensation? Every sensation that’s happening, how do you stretch and lean into and breathe into and allow for the pleasure and don’t forget to receive. Oh, there’s so much pleasure in receiving. It’s just like really quiet. It’s in the background and you can just feel life and you can just receive it. Just receive that aliveness that you are feeling. So much pleasure in that receiving. It requires nothing of you. You can just relax and feel it coming in and moving through so much pleasure and just receiving and feeling life. A so good. It’s just such a simple question. Is this going to be an exercise or is this going to be a lifestyle? Are you going to take pleasure in a 100 breaths today or just 10? What would you enjoy most? If you want to recharge as quickly as possible, it is really about reducing stimulation. So, if you want to reduce your stress, how you do your downtime is is critical. If you found this video helpful, please subscribe. And if you want more tools for reducing stress, you can go here or click on the link below.