“Well John Henry hammered in the mountain. He’d give a grunt and give a groan with every swing. The women folks from miles around heard him and come down, to watch him make the cold steel ring, Lord what a swinger! Just listen to the cold steel ring” – Johnny Cash “The Legend of John Henry’s Hammer.”
The Loss of Traditional Stories and Values
A culture that abandons its traditional stories is in for some losses. Deeply ingrained values that needed to be given little voice in the schoolrooms and at children’s bedsides just a century ago are disappearing, and a low, rumbling chorus has begun to emerge. Keep an ear to the ground and you will hear it, in board rooms, on social media platforms, and around the fire pits of our grandfathers and grandmothers. “Gen Z doesn’t know how to work.” “It takes two millennials to do the work I used to do in a day, and three or four Gen Z’ers.” “Nobody knows how to work anymore.” Some of these blanket statements are likely exaggerated, but stereotypes do not arise from nowhere. They are themselves a bit like legends, beginning with simple observations about real events that are repeated across a wide swath of data points. Observed and repeated consistently enough, they begin to develop into a caricature. This occurs across ethnicities, genders, and even generations.
The stereotype that our current generations are not as hard working and diligent as those that came before is likely to be based on some degree of truth. The same process of observation, repetition, and caricaturizing was likely its fertilizer. But how much is the loss of our traditional stories contributing to a lack of character in our children? As the screen became the primary mode of entertainment, and then the primary mode of social interaction, our stories are told less and less. If you walked into a middle school today, you would be hard pressed to find a child who knows the legend of John Henry. You would find many who know Arianna Grande. Which of these two “inspirational figures” is more likely to instill children with diligence and grit in their work?
The slipping away of our stories and the disappearance of our values are more connected than we know.
The Legend of John Henry: A Stoic Diligence Hero
For any who don’t know it, John Henry was a freed slave who worked on the railroads in the late 1800’s following the civil war. He was a “steel-driving man” whose work was driving a metal spike into rock so that an explosive charge could be placed within. While his story has surely been exaggerated by years of retelling, he really did exist, and really raced the new steam-powered drill invented around that time. According to legend, his strength was immense and his tirelessness unmatched. He could drive a spike into rock with a single blow of the maul that was the primary tool of his trade. When the new steam drill was introduced John Henry spoke up, claiming that the machine could never take the place of a man like himself. A test was suggested, and it turned into a full out race. John Henry beat the machine along an unknown length of tunnel, and then died proudly with his hammer in his hand, his heart giving out from exhaustion and stress. Historians say that he most likely made himself very sick, and died in bed a few days after the incident, but his story was repeated and retold. One man to another it spread, until it was the piece of American folklore that it remains today. His statue can still be visited at John Henry Memorial Park in Talcott, West Virginia.
On the rare occasion this valuable piece of legend is retold, John Henry is made out to be a man of super-human strength. A body-builder physique, rippling chords of muscles in places that swinging a hammer does not build muscle. Portrayed in film by the likes of Michael Clark Duncan; a phenomenal actor (may he rest in peace), but a body-builder not a hammer-swinger. Endurance that out-strips the best horse, and the ability to work himself literally to death without showing signs of weakness. In reality, a human almost cannot physically work himself to death. We are designed with bodies that defend themselves, and we collapse in exhaustion long before we are in real danger of death. If we could strip away the legend and the Hollywood imagery, the man we’d likely find at the core of this story is a man of great diligence. The real legend is the man with the mental fortitude to do the next thing. Drive the next spike, and the next. When he’s bored, he drives the next spike. Thirsty? He takes a drink, then drives the next spike. Exhausted? Eats, sleeps, then drives the next spike. A man like that very soon finds that he has driven more spikes than his peers, and that his endurance has built to an admirable level. It’s mental strength and diligence that builds a man like this, rather than romanticized super-heroism. How do we get this kind of mental strength for ourselves? Since we are not born with it, there is only one way. It must be cultivated, honed intentionally.
How to Cultivate Diligence with Stoic Practices
Below are some things to practice in order to build a skill that makes legends out of men. As usual, this list is not complete, and your additions in the comments are more than welcome. However, getting busy practicing these things is sure to set you apart over time. Get ready to roll up your sleeves and practice.
1. Do Not Lie to Yourself: Embrace Stoic Honesty
Honesty is harder than we like to admit, and most of us are guilty of bending the truth on a pretty regular basis. In our desire to get ahead, it’s natural to continually paint ourselves in a slightly better light than the reality merits. Doing this in a job interview is somewhat expected, though I would argue that it’s not a virtue and leads to unhappiness. But, doing it to yourself is much more harmful. We have the capacity as humans to repeat slight falsehoods to ourselves with such rapidity and consistency that we begin to believe. By the time you reach adulthood, you are probably so adept at this that your entire self-perception is built on a foundation of small self-deceptions.
We need to make this equation a false one.
Self-perception = Self-deception
Begin to practice breaking down this foundation of small self-deceptions. Begin to strip away the lies you have told yourself, and try to gain an understanding of what and who you truly are. You will likely find that like most of humanity, you are a lover of pleasure and ease. You do not actually love the process of becoming legendary, you love it when circumstances arrange themselves in such a way as to make you come off as legendary. It’s these instances that likely form the list of greatest accomplishments you are most likely to share. Stop. Begin working in the other direction. Engage in a quest to find your true self, however unlikeable and unimpressive that true self may be. It is only by understanding your current position that you can begin to set realistic goals and build on a foundation that is not made of air. To get to the next location in any journey, you first need to know where you are. Find this place. Embrace it as truth, the real you. Look it in the eye. Then finally, after all this time, you can begin to build.
2. Set Realistic Goals: A Stoic Approach to Progress
Once you have honestly found where you really are, begin to identify small legs of the journey that are realistic, achievable, and likely to be realized with a minimal output of effort. Select a goal that even a half-ass lover of the path of least resistance like yourself can say, “well, I guess I could do that much.” If your desire is to become an expert in personal finance, do not set out to take a two-hour per day, self-driven course after your nine-hour job. You will never stick to this, and you know it. Not from zero. You will exhaust yourself, burn yourself out, and in a week you’ll be back to playing Skyrim for two hours after work every day. Goals are much easier to achieve in Skyrim. Instead, set out to read on the subject of personal finance for fifteen minutes per day. This is a realistic and achievable goal, and one that you can commit to and keep. You can do this without an extraordinary output of effort, and it will take you from level zero to level one.
Do not try to get to level two before you have reached level one. The Audi TTS Roadster can go from 0 to 60 mph in five seconds flat. Do not admire the car for this. Admire it for its ability to go 0-1 in .083 seconds, many times over. Practice being that car, daily and with great consistency, before you try to go 2 mph.
Examples:
- You want to become very fit? Start by exercising twenty minutes per day, not two hours.
- You want to lose weight and keep it off? Start by eliminating sugary snacks on weekdays, not a hard-core sugar-free diet.
- You want to become articulate? Start by free-writing 10 minutes every morning, not three blog articles per week.
- You want to beat a steam engine? Start by driving a spike every day.
3. Don’t Try to Do Too Many Things at Once: Stoic Focus
Hand in hand with the above, choose a few things in your life or in your work to improve at a time. Too much multi-tasking is your enemy here. Despite the demands of your employer that you be a natural god at it, most humans are not gods at it. The reality is that women are a little more gifted in this area than men, and that neither are as gifted as octopuses. So, don’t try to be an octopus. Be a man, or a woman, whichever you are. Select a reasonable number of improvements, practice them in small, achievable increments, and with great, religious consistency. Otherwise, you end up making very little improvement in very many areas rather than making noteworthy gains in a few well-prioritized areas. We don’t want to end up making this particular J.R.R. Tolkien quote our life-mantra: “I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter over too much bread.”
Example: You want to quit smoking, lose weight/gain muscle, read an hour per day, take a class, spend more quality time with your kids, start a garden, and start a side-hustle. Right now you are doing none of those things. Choose two of them to work on diligently for the next six months, in small, achievable increments. Do not start all seven of them simultaneously. You’ll be burned out in a week, and back to gaming or binge-watching shows three hours per day before you can say “Jack Robinson shouldn’t multi-task.”
A Small Sidebar for People-Leaders: Stoic Leadership
There are good managers and mentors who understand this well. They give out a few goals at a time and incentivize those goals with encouragement and recognition along the way. They set a goal post that is a bit stretching, but achievable at their employee’s current level of knowledge and skill, and provide the employee with the educational and other tools needed to make diligent strides toward that goal post. The path they lay out is clear, their expectations well defined. A hardworking, industrious employee will achieve the goal if he applies himself, and when he does, the manager will plant a flag in that spot before moving the goal post a little further down the path. The best of us humans are so thick-headed, so resistant to change, so attracted to the path of least resistance, that any forward progress we make is nothing short of miraculous. This is why it isn’t hard to find people who have advanced in age, but never advanced in mental strength and maturity. When a person does show the self-discipline and sacrifice that is necessary to make small improvements, recognition for that is not only wise, but right and just. This is a stride against the overwhelming odds of human nature itself. Encouraging words should be spoken, and a flag of achievement planted where this goal-post stood. “Well done! You’ve made it, you’ve mastered this leg of the journey.” Only then does the manager introduce the next bit of progress, only then provide the next stretch point. Highly successful teachers might refer to this as a “bottom up” teaching method. You are going to identify what your student can do and build on that foundation, in small achievable increments. As a result, the foundation of knowledge grows stronger and larger, and eventually encompasses the end goal the teacher had in mind all along, like a pioneer nation expanding its borders into the wilderness.
On the other hand, there are bad managers who take the “top-down” teaching approach. These will approach the employee on the basis of the vast distance between their current knowledge and ability and the end-goal potential the manager wants to see. The employee will then experience negativity rather than encouragement, consistent reminder of their insufficiency in comparison to the final destination the manager desires. They will be reviewed poorly or belittled for not knowing things that they have not yet been taught, and not having abilities that they have not yet had a chance to practice consistently. Progress will not be recognized, because its small increments are too insignificant to the manager’s own abilities, or to the desired destination skill level. A goal post will be set, and when it has been reached and surpassed, the employee will discover that it has already been moved, like a carrot on a stick. In addition, the manager will set so many goals and pull their subordinate in so many directions that their employee cannot possibly focus productively on all of them. Trying to do so will produce very little progress in a lot of areas, rather than noteworthy progress in a few key things. An entire article might be written on this management style, but it is sufficient to say for now that it does not breed diligence and motivation. What it does breed is frustration and turnover.
4. Be Experimental: Stoic Innovation
If there is one thing that human beings seem to universally despise, it is monotony. Monotony is a great motivation killer, and the enemy of innovation. There are a few benefits to doing something the same way every time. It can fortify accuracy and completeness. However, it can also cause your brain to go on auto-pilot, and fail to test innovations that may in fact break the process wide open in terms of speed and efficiency, as well as leading to other applicable ideas for other tasks. Keep in mind that there are many ways to do a thing, but there is only one best way. Relativism is psychobabble. For everything you do, there is an approach that surpasses all the others. What makes you think that your method is good if you have tried few others? When we stop to think about why we do a given task a certain way, the answer is often “that’s the way it’s always been done.” Don’t fall into this trap. Try things, experiment, and innovate. If nineteen new approaches produce a worse outcome, and one produces better, you’ve made progress that can be applied for the rest of your life.
Most people don’t marry the concept of experimentation with diligence, but those who do consider it to be a part of their methodical process. They build in planned time to analyze and approach the task in new and different ways, brainstorm new ideas, and work through them like a mad scientist trying to turn lead into gold. They eliminate the bad, keep the good, and become machines of efficiency over time. Most importantly, they remain nimble in their diligence.
Bravery is actually the friend of diligence in a way that timidity can never be.
5. Practice Focus: Stoic Discipline
Almost everyone who writes about diligence speaks about the importance of avoiding distractions. One might think there must be something to it! Since this article is geared toward things to practice instead of things to avoid, we’ll frame it in these terms: “Practice focus!” When entering time that you have designated for work on a particular skill, remember the great sacrifice you are making. Think for a minute about the unbelievable expense of attention, and remember why you have selected this time of learning and training as a matter of higher importance than the dozens of other things you could be doing instead. With that weight in your mind, set about with some intentionality not to allow those less important matters to seep in and spoil this sacrifice. If you are making yourself available to distracting Twitter/X feeds, have your linked-in feed open in the browser, or have the urge to check phone notifications the moment they pop up, these things need to be removed from the equation. If you cannot seem to do this through willpower, then remove your willpower from the equation. There are focus apps that can block all of these distractions during specific times that you designate.
Give thought also to your ears, particularly when the skill you are practicing involves mental absorption and acuity. Your brain, like the computer that it is, can only handle so much information intake at a time without losing some of its processing speed. Inflow of language in particular will be processed and detract from the performance of your brain, whether you are really listening or not. Save the podcast for a time in which you are not learning. You can listen during times of more mundane, auto-pilot work or while driving. Don’t introduce a flow of language into your mind and expect to learn at the power and speed of which your brain is capable at max attention. The same is true of music with lyrics. With or without your conscious awareness, your brain is devoting bandwidth to understanding the words that you are hearing, even if you think you can tune it out. If you must listen to something, feed your ears with peaceful, lyric-free music. Classical music has been proven to sharpen the mind and increase focus rather than detract from it. If you’re not a fan, try it anyway. You may find yourself developing a taste for higher beauty as a welcome biproduct of your designated focus time.
6. Take Pride in Endurance: Stoic Resilience
This final suggestion may seem counterintuitive after just having read that monotony is the enemy of innovation. However, if you’re going to put in the many hours of practice required to master a skill, there will be times when it becomes boring and mundane. I’m sure that John Henry didn’t get excited every time he picked up the next spike, after driving a hundred spikes in an afternoon. Yet, he became legendary for his ability to ignore his boredom and find peace in the rhythm. There is a certain strength that if developed will set you apart from the rest incredibly quickly. That strength is the ability to endure repetitive labor of body or mind without faltering and fading. Think about the admiration our culture gives to explosive athletes that can perform incredible feats in short bursts. It’s true that long distance runners do not receive the same accolades, but what they do is actually harder. If you know any, you’ll know the immense sense of accomplishment and achievement they feel simply because they are able to keep going, and keep going, long after the others have quit. Think about this and begin to admire it, for it is worthy of admiration. Apply it to your own tasks, your own work and goals. Begin to take pride in this ability, knowing that few possess it to any degree of significance. Begin to think of yourself as elite in this rare and admirable trait, and take joy and pride in its individual performances. You could find boredom and exasperation in the repetition, or you could find peace, rhythm, and calm in it. I would posit to you that this is your choice, and the choice you make is weighty.
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