I think Type A people have a Type B problem, and Type B people have a Type A problem.
Insecure overachievers need to learn how to chill out and relax, and lazy people need to learn how to work harder and be disciplined.
Given that you subscribe to me, long term you're probably Type A. Some version of "awakening anxiety and harness for productivity" as Andrew Huberman says.
Here's the thing you may have noticed: Type A people with a Type B problem get very little sympathy.
Because a miserable but outwardly successful person always appears to be in a much more preferential position than a content being lazy but on the verge of bankrupt one.
Problems of opportunity will always get less sympathy than ones of scarcity.
One feels cushy, the other like a limitation. One's bourgeois, and the other's a systemic imposition.
"I need someone to teach me how to be disciplined and work harder" feels noble, upward-aiming and charitable.
"I need someone to teach me how to ease off and relax" feels dopamine, hedonistic, transactional and indulgent.
Every underdog movie ever has a training montage of someone sorting their life out by working harder. None included a guy learning how to log out of Slack and go to a spa, to heal his brain or play.
So yes, Type A people may objectively live "better" lives, but subjectively they're ravaged by the sense that they've never done enough.
They wake up every morning feeling as if they're already behind and only if they dominate their entire day with work will they have dragged themselves back up to some minimum level of acceptable output which means they can go to sleep that night without feeling like a wasteman.
Congratulations - you might be very successful but you also might be very miserable.
"Just work harder" advice only makes everyone more successful if the only way that they can be helped is outwardly.
There are very few issues in life which can be solved by just working harder, everyone treats it as a panacea, but it's not a cure-all.
And on average, maybe more people DO need to hear David Goggins shouting in their face to go harder than need to hear Thích Nhất Hạnh whispering gently that they are good enough.
But for a certain, perhaps minority cohort of people, they actually need to hear the opposite message, once a parasympathetic Trojan horse.
Who's going to carry the TV remote? Andrew Tate?
I need to become me.
Type B problems are just as tough as Type A ones, but they require a much less sexy solution - peace. One you actually can't achieve by working harder.
Chris Williamson | @chriswillx