I spent five years as a digital “slow-mad.”
Slow-mad (n): Like a nomad, but slower. Living in places for months, not days/weeks.
My energy was consumed by the administrative overhead of living.
- Finding new apartments
- Deciding where to eat
- Finding workspaces
- Picking new gyms
- Setting up wifi
This is the Red Queen Effect.
In Alice in Wonderland, the Red Queen tells Alice:
“It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.”
The irony? I was moving to new places. But I was running fast just to maintain stability.
When investing, if your return is 4% but inflation is 5%, you are losing buying power.
You have to meet the hurdle rate just to break even.
Entropy is the natural tendency for things to fall apart.
- Relationships decay if you don’t nurture them.
- Muscles atrophy if you don’t train them.
- Teams drift if you don’t align them.
You must pay a maintenance tax just to stay exactly where you are.
We love the idea of “1% better every day.”
But in the real world, entropy charges interest.
If your relationship decays by 2% a day from natural conflict and you improve it by 1% a day (date night), your relationship is still dying.
It’s just dying 1% slower than before.
You only get “1% better” after you’ve paid the hurdle rate.
🏃♂️
Are you doing enough work to clear the hurdle rate?