How to Burn 60 Million Calories

Back when I had a real job, I hated opening my Outlook inbox to find an invite from my boss for another “alignment meeting.” But now I’m starting to believe that’s what life is about. Not going into a huddle room to be told what you’re doing wrong and what to do instead. No.

Life’s about alignment.

Flipping it, that means life’s ultimate challenge is to minimize the friction caused by misalignment. And no, it doesn’t mean I owe my boss an apology. Her alignment meetings caused more friction than they released.

Bear with me, please. Like ‘purpose’ or ‘authenticity,’ alignment is oft-maligned as an amorphous buzzword. So I invite you to hop into a huddle with me. Let’s try to align on what it means to be aligned—not as a corporate employee or a painting on a wall, but as a human (or as a lion).

Alignment seems to break down into five dimensions, each with its own way to go wrong:

1. Self: The fit between your understanding of your nature and your actual nature. Misalignment: A lion thinking it’s a dolphin.
2. Expression: The fit between your actions and what you’re built to do. Misalignment: A lion trying to swim after food.
3. Context: The fit between your environment and your needs and abilities. Misalignment: A lion living in Vancouver.
4. Relationships: The fit between your needs and abilities and the needs and abilities of others. Misalignment: A lion hunting with raccoons.
5. Time: The fit between your present choices and a coherent life trajectory. Misalignment: A lion bouncing from one pride to another, going solo, then going back.

I’m no lion-tologist, but I suspect those felines are simpler to align than we super mostly-hairless monkeys are. Even so, the objective is the same for us kings of the world/jungle respectively, and all other species too: Alignment across all five dimensions.

Alignment is physical and unrealistic

Physics can measure how aligned we are, theoretically at least.

More alignment = less wasted friction.

Note the importance of the word wasted. Life is not about minimizing friction in the absolute. If it were, we’d have a simple hack to win, one that many of us are trying to varying degrees but not thriving with: do nothing. Doing diddly squat creates minimal friction, but also a crappy life.

Minimizing wasted friction is a matter of efficient use of energy.

Each of us has a finite amount of energy to spend in our lifetime. We have give or take 2,000 calories a day times 80 years times 365 days, which is about ~60 million calories. Or a quarter million Snickers bars, about one packed school bus.

A theoretically perfect life would align across all five of the dimensions so that every one of those calories goes toward the same job.

“Ugh Chris. This energy alignment theory of yours is ridiculously unrealistic! Zero fun either. What about sleeping, playing with my kids/self, reading awesome newsletters, or going to the theatre to watch the three-hour-long Odyssey, which I hear is a can’t-miss?”

First of all, of course, it’s unrealistic.

Second of all, my strawman overlooked the Time alignment dimension. Sleeping, playing, and maybe even Matt-Damon-watching can be efficient uses of energy if they’re part of your bigger-picture project.

What might this bigger picture project be?

I think it’s building your GOAT (greatest of all timelines) life. Of one million possible ways your life could go from today, it’s the one you would not trade for any of the others.

That probably involves a challenge that uses your natural talents to take on a meaningful problem. You engage in work you look forward to, enjoy, and feel proud of, and that accumulates into something useful.

The incredible game

This alignment challenge reminds me of a video game I played in the library at elementary school, The Incredible Machine. Your life is a convoluted system of ropes and pulleys you want to arrange to do a job. The fewer knots and other sources of friction you can have in your system, the more efficient your transfer of energy, so the more you can move. The more you can move with each Snickers bite of energy, the more you accomplish and feel fulfilled. And if it’s efficient, you can keep on going.

So here’s the full theory:

Or for those who prefer prose to arrows:

Alignment reduces avoidable friction, leaving more energy for effort that produces something of value.

The implication of this is that effort isn’t the source of burnout and dissatisfaction. Wasted friction is. Stuff like pointless “alignment” meetings.

Effort is the source of fulfillment. You want effort. You just want it to be efficient, to pull in a consistent direction that gets as much as possible out of your capabilities. But that direction is almost by definition unclear when you’re leaping from stone to stone into the mist. So the most efficient way forward is a consciously suboptimal one: take the next step, see where it leads, and hone in on slightly more aligned direction from there. Since life tends to last a pretty long time, you want to work at a radically moderate pace that allows you to rest, recover, and strengthen so you can keep going until the Grim Reaper hooks you.

Bad bosses, our natural instincts to conserve energy and avoid risk, and the standardizing systems around us create friction we can reduce through better alignment. Same for the mis-a-lion-ments: not knowing what you are, chasing food you can’t catch, living in the wrong latitude, hunting with vermin, and switching prides every year. Then there are volcanoes, earthquakes, and mosquitoes that create friction beyond of our control. All eat away at our ~60 million calories that could have otherwise generated something valuable. This makes life a tougher alignment problem than The Incredible Machine.

You can choose to burn your calories on little more than your metabolism to watch others play games on your screens. You can settle for some level of friction as good enough and grind away. Or you can play life’s unrealistically difficult version of The Incredible Machine.

I choose to play and recommend others do, too. I hope we’re aligned.

Meeting adjourned,

Chris