One myth that is quietly draining your progress & vitality

There’s a myth that has existed for approximately 265 years.

One that has been draining your energy, focus and sense of progress.

It’s the myth that that the only way forward is through force and control.

That success = pain and suffering.

It’s a myth propped up by the post-Industrial Revolution philosophy of “progress at all costs”.

Since the first whistle blown in the factories in 18th century Britain we’ve been on a mechanical war path in the West.

One that has stripped us away from our true nature, and convinced us that the more we override our biology, the more successful we’ll be.

That stillness is laziness, that intuition is unreliable, and that the only way to matter is to grind, produce, and perform, no matter the cost.

While this philosophy has allowed us to build empires, scale industries, and stretch human capability beyond imagination.

It has also caused the rise in burnout (a term that didn’t exist until the 1970’s), chronic illness (a modern medical category that only became mainstream in the 1980s), mental health crises (a phrase barely used before the 1990s), and a pervasive sense of disconnection from ourselves and the world around us.

It’s a tradeoff we never consciously agreed to, but one we’ve all inherited.

A tradeoff I believe we need to really question, especially as we take another mechanical leap with the rise of AI.

Before the smoke stacks and punch clocks, life looked a little different.

People lived closer to the land and worked with the rhythm of their nervous systesm and the seasons.

Work was hard, yes, but it was embodied.
Tied to the sun, the soil, the heartbeat and the breath.

Attention was dispersed across fewer, more tangible domains: family, faith, food, craft

There was no inbox. No feed. No algorithm.
There was also no standard time.
Time was local, relational, and solar.

You rose with the light, ate when hungry, and rested when tired. The body, not the bell, dictated the schedule.

But in the mid-18th century, something changed.

The invention of the steam engine kicked off a chain reaction that would reshape humanity.

Factory work required people to show up at the same time.

Standardized time zones were invented.

Clock towers and modern personal time pieces became the norm and began to rule over our bodies.

And people spent more time in artificial environments, with artificial lighting, instead of outside in nature, surrounded by the sun.

Work was no longer something you did, it was somewhere you went.

Labour became detached from meaning.
Production became the goal.

And the body was just a vessel to be optimized, maximized, and eventually discarded.

This shift toward the mechanization of life created a cultural stress loop we’ve been trapped in ever since.

And it has three parts:

1. Urgency
You must move faster. There is no time.
Respond now. Perform now. Improve now.
Rest is weakness. Delay is death.

2. Extraction
You are a resource. A unit of output.
Your time, energy, attention, it’s all mineable, monetizable and measurable. If it doesn’t produce, it doesn’t matter.

3. Disconnection
From your body. From your values. From your nature. The system works best when you forget you’re human and start acting like a machine.

That’s what I call the “Industrial Stress Loop.”
And most of us are living in it every single day.

The offspring of this stress loop?

Three modern systems that reinforce the myth of “progress at all costs”:

1. The Attention Economy

Where your focus isn’t yours anymore. It’s a product.

Hijacked by attention merchants, mined for dopamine, and sold to the highest bidder to reinforce an algorithm of focus control.

2. The Knowledge Economy

Where output isn’t physical, it’s mental.

Thinking is the new labour.

And your brain is the machine.

But unlike machines, your brain needs rest.

The problem though, is that the knowledge economy is always on.

If you can’t keep up (like the factory worker before you) you’re irrelevant, obsolete, unsuccessful.

3. The Psychiatric Industrial Complex

Where natural human emotion is pathologized.

Stress becomes a symptom.

Distraction becomes a disorder.

And instead of asking why you’re unwell, we ask what pill can keep you going.

These three systems don’t operate in isolation. They build off of one another to maintain the illusion of progress.

The attention economy fragments your focus and hijacks your nervous system.

The knowledge economy exploits that state, demanding constant output, availability, and performance.

And when your body breaks down under the pressure?

The mental health industry steps in, not to heal, but to modulate you back into productivity.

So you can keep participating in the loop.

It’s a system that serves profit and performance.

But rarely human vitality.

When you realize this. When you really, really see it, everything changes.

Because your personal struggles with stress, distraction, and self-worth aren’t individual failures.

They’re cultural design flaws that has us all swimming upstream towards what we deem to be success.

But here’s the good news:

There’s a way out of this loop.

Not by opting out, pushing harder or “sticking it to the man”.

But by learning how to operate inside of this game you didn’t sign up for, through remembering what you were designed for and how.

Because underneath all the cultural noise, algorithmic hijacking, and industrial pressure, you are still a human being.

With an ancient, biological rhythm beating beneath the machine.

A rhythm you’ve likely never been taught about.

Because it can’t be commodified.
Can’t be scaled.
Can’t be optimized.

But it is the “hack” that helps you succeed, while maintaining a high level of well-being.

Something we all deserve.

It’s called the Ultradian Rhythm.

A natural 90 to 120-minute cycle that governs your focus, energy, and recovery throughout the day.

It’s your built-in system for performance and rest. Action and recovery. Effort and ease.

It’s not just nature’s original productivity protocol, it’s also the rhythm for how we maintain physiological and cognitive health.

It’s been quietly active beneath the pressure of the modern world your entire life.

And syncing with this rhythm might just be the most radical and healing act of rebellion you can take.

Next week, I’ll show you how to reclaim it.

Much Love,

Cory Firth
Creator of One Minute Weekend

Let’s work together!