A maniacal sense of urgency

Epic trauma-avoidance strategy or successful formula for life?

This weekend, while scrolling my apps in a rare gap from domestic servitude, I chance across an FT article about Elon Musk. According to his biographer, Walter Isaacson, Musk said that “a maniacal sense of urgency is our operating principle.”

Painful as it is to consider further one of the world’s most over-considered subjects I find it impossible not to be fascinated by clues from the pathological and inspiring outside edges of productivity.

So I immediately try figuring out what ‘maniacally urgent’ could do for me.

My mind turns the phrase around, toying with it like a new and curious object – What if I were to become ‘maniacally urgent’? Could I actually decide to do that? I feel the cells of my body stirring with languid interest. What would happen if I applied a maniacal sense of urgency to my Substack posting, say, or to my amateurish and haphazard business development?

I feel interested and skeptical at the same time: interested because, you never know, one day I might chance on an idea that changes my world forever and elevates work to the unimaginable uplands of success.

Skeptical, because concepts have come and gone in my mind-world for decades (10x! Deep Work! Massive Action! Locked In!). Usually these memes are accompanied by a burst of energy and intense note-taking followed by a hypnotic relapse into the immediacy of real life. Mantras rarely survive the reality of business-as-usual for longer than a day or two.

Plus - how do you even pronounce maniacal? There are two obvious ways, but both of them are hard to effect without actually sounding like a bit of a maniac (try it).

But maybe this time it’s different? After all, this one comes directly from the coal face of contemporary world domination, not from a Harvard leadership coach or a productivity journalist.

The hope of finding magical incantations springs eternal. Imagine what I could achieve!

I turn back to the question at hand: If I became maniacally urgent would this be in service of my one day not being maniacal, or would it be for the purpose of remaining maniacal forever? If temporary, could I be maniacal without endangering my health / nervous system / family / immediate neighbours? If forever, would that be good?

Realising I need more time to think this over I set off on a walk in the gardens of my office space. Are maniacs allowed to take walks or do they have to be all laptop and board room? What about footling around from time to time?

My actual office

I linger by a tree that radiates Tolkienish quiddity in the late autumnal light. Can urgency live alongside magic, play and luminosity? In the life I create from my fiery determination will kids still be able to converse with elves or hang charms in trees?

Also - is it possible to save the planet by behaving in the exact way that fucked it up in the first place, only much, much faster? Is that even logically consistent?

Can we use urgency without it using us?

Eventually I make my decision, underlined by the simple observation that I am thinking about this, and no one who is maniacally urgent has time to think about anything except what they are trying to achieve.

I return to my desk. I’ve decided that I will take a homeopathic dose of mania. I will think about it from time to time, dabbing it on my forehead like a priest administering the sacrament to a underaged communicant - go forth, my child, and be productive!

But I will not be a maniac, because already I’m thinking about bedtime.

And it will not get its own post-it note.

Final thought: in this interdependent world our personal nervous systems serve as the battleground for great systemic forces: the intense pressure to compete fostered by global capitalism plays out in our drive to always be ‘on’ (sympathetic nervous system), while nature counterattacks by putting the brakes on and forcing us to slow down (parasympathetic nervous system).

That’s why so many of us experience life as a rollercoaster ride - energetic highs, crashing lows, burnout, coffee ups, sleep downs etc. In the context of this battle for the soul of the world, maniacal urgency is just the latest effort to break free of nature’s gravity, just as the Mars mission is a bid to break free of all previously existing planetary constraints and even to exit the Earth altogether.

But why not enjoy a few quotes about this unimaginable being from his biography, just in case you too would like to ride one of the small waves of energy created by his powerful and unspeakable oddity.

Thank you.

Laurence

PS - no one could accuse me of having a sense of urgency about my Substack posting (recently). Sorry. I have spent almost two months trying to finish an article about work and pain which has been eluding my normal mania for ease and simplicity, and causing me - yes - pain. So that’s interrupted the flow for a bit. More soon.