Hey, Reader

It is 3:11 in the morning.

He has been awake since two. Nothing is wrong. He is just awake.

The phone lies face down on the nightstand. He tells himself he won’t pick it up.

Then he picks it up.

The screen is too bright. He turns it down twice.

He types: why am I tired all the time at 56?

Reads four results. Types again: adrenal fatigue.

Then: burnout symptoms men 50+.

Then: best magnesium

By 3:40 he has three tabs open.

• A supplement.
• A sleep protocol.
• A fancy clinic in California that costs 5,200 Dollars a week.

He closes all three and puts the phone back.

Nothing he read had the right word in it.

Now.

I know that man. I was him. Different year, different phone.

What he buys next

He will buy the magnesium. Most of us do.

Then the sleep tracker.

Then two weeks in Greece or Hawaii, which works beautifully for nine days.

Then bloodwork, which comes back “fine”.

Then he cuts his week to four days and feels guilty on the fifth.

Look.

None of that is stupid. All of it fixes being tired.

And tired is the easiest of the five words below.

Five words for the same feeling. Only one is about sleep.

Let's be specific for a second:

Tired. A state. It came from today. Sleep takes it away. Every man over 50 is tired sometimes, and it is the least interesting thing about him.

Exhaustion. A debt. It has a size. Sleep pays it off, over weeks. If Greece (or Hawaii) fixed you in May and it lasted until September, you were exhausted. Now you’re not.

Depletion. Something is gone. Rest doesn’t bring it back, because rest is not what got taken. You sleep nine hours and wake up empty. This is where we start thinking something is medically wrong with us. And the bloodwork keeps saying "normal range".

Extraction. How it happens. Something in your week takes out more than it puts back. Every week. On time. It doesn’t care if you slept. A rested man in that kind of week is empty again by Thursday. (!)

Desertification. Where it ends. The ground can’t hold anything anymore. You water it and the water runs off the top.

In a human it looks like this: The holiday stops working. A good Saturday doesn’t carry us into Tuesday anymore. Praise goes in and nothing lands. Food goes in and nothing lands.

Those are the five words he was looking for at 3:11. The search box gave him none of them.

Try it, if you don't believe me...

Why? Because none of them sell anything.

Where the word "regenerative" actually comes from:

Most of you know it from food. A label on beef. Maybe a documentary on Netflix about dirt.

Here is the whole idea, and it really does come from dirt.

A conventional farmer asks: how much came off this field?

A regenerative farmer asks: is the soil better than before?

Same field. Same year.

Only the second question tells you if the field is still there in twenty years...

Isn't that the point we strive for?

Two researchers, Claire LaCanne and Jonathan Lundgren, compared corn farms side by side across the American Midwest and published it in 2018 (Regenerative agriculture: merging farming and natural resource conservation profitably, PeerJ 6:e4428).

The regenerative fields grew less corn. They made more money.

And the money didn’t follow the harvest. It followed the life in the soil.

Guess what?

We, as busy professionals, have counted output since we were 25. I certainly did.

Revenue. Title. Deals closed. Kilometres run. Inbox at zero.

Nobody ever taught us to look at the ground it came off.

A man can have a record year on a field that is turning to dust.

The question that changes the answer profoundly:

Is this better or worse after what I just did?

Ask it about a week, not about a life.

• A client call that leaves you sharper than you were at nine. Better.
• A client call that leaves you needing an hour of nothing afterwards, every time, for two years. That field is being mined.
• The dinner where you talked. Better.
• The dinner where you performed. Worse.

The question says nothing about whether the thing is nice, or fun, or well paid. The farmer’s version doesn’t either. A field can give a beautiful harvest and be poorer for it.

Simple, logical.

Three questions for this week, if you want:

Pick one thing. Your body, money, or the person closest to you. Just one.

Write one line a day, Monday to Friday. By Friday, one of the three will be obvious, and usually not the one you expected.

The last bit

Recovery gets you back to where you were.

Regeneration builds ground you never had before.

Here is the part that never shows up in a 3 am search. A 56-year-old with thin ground is still standing on 30 years of knowing how things go.

No 28-year-old can buy that, at any price. And ground everybody gave up on comes back when you treat it differently.

Alive and kicking, right?

​Behind this link is the shortcut. Click it; it's free. The result might not be what you expect...

Let's regenerate the world - starting with yours
​
Daniel

PS: almost as sweet as grapes - this free check​