[image error]If you try hard, growth is inevitable. Until it isn’t.

The reality of this statement goes against everything most of us have been taught to believe. We’ve been conditioned to believe that growth is some veritable cornucopia that can always be tapped into with a bit of gumption, savvy, whatever the bullshit buzzword of the week is.

This isn’t a new observation in any capacity.

Here’s an article from 2012 about it:

https://hbr.org/2012/04/growth-isnt-going-to-last-fore

Here’s a more recent thread from Reddit:

Capitalism isn’t sustainable because it relies on eternal growth, which is obviously impossible from badeconomics

One look at any real-world example, any example that hasn’t been manipulated by social construction, and the myth is pretty quickly dispelled.

Eventually you get diminishing returns.

Eventually you try to mitigate the diminishing factors and sustain growth.

At best you get damage control and slow the inevitable degradation.

And there’s nothing wrong with that.

There’s nothing wrong with a stable constant.

There’s nothing wrong with good is good enough.

And it’s unfortunate that we’ve been conditioned to believe that the reality that growth isn’t sustainable is a bleak outlook rather than an objective one.

As usual, minor segue that I’ll bring back home:

A few years ago I started weightlifting. This past week marks the end of my “explosive” growth. Those early golden years everyone who lifts talks about.

Now I go up 5-10lbs a week in the big compounds and about 10lbs on the bench press every month or so.

I started scrambling, trying to figure out new ways I could get that same growth I had before. I misconstrued my slowed results as failure initially. Because I wasn’t doing more at a faster pace. My growth wasn’t growing any longer.

It took a while to come to terms with that.

There will be no more massive bursts in growth most likely. There will only be steady growth, and alterations to my patterns, some of which will result in a quick increase, some of which will result in slower increases.

Some might call this “evolution.”

Eventually I’ll get older and I’ll be relegated to keeping what strength I have left.

Eventually I’ll lose it.

And that’ll be fine.

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I wish we could all make peace with the reality that growth isn’t eternal.

Economically, growth eventually leads to cutting corners, cutting jobs, slashing integrity to increase profits for shareholders. But you cut the bottom out from consumers.

We’ve reached a point where the government subsidizes growth by providing the poor with enough money to continue consuming.

This bullshit approach isn’t sustainable.

Shareholder growth isn’t sustainable.

Eventually this system bottoms out.

I think we’re at the breaking point.

And I think we’ve passed the point at which we can solve the problem.

The point at which we could have solved the problem was years ago, when people were employed with living wages, and corporations realized that they needed to keep people employed with living wages to feed the machine.

I’m feeling pretty disillusioned with the concept of growth lately.

I work in assessment in higher education.

Our goal is to engage in continuous improvement.

But there will be a point at which we have reached our maximum potential. Every resource will be tapped to its full potential.

Every person will reach optimal effectiveness.

The institution will reach optimal transparency and effectiveness.

Then what?

The edicts will change.

Most likely they’ll be superficial changes.

They’ll be marketed as “evolution.”

Some of the changes might be evolution.

But more will be superficial.

This isn’t growth.

It’s just change.

And in many cases, it’s arbitrary change.

Arbitrary changes based on arbitrary changes.

Why?

And why have we been conditioned to hate people who are content simply being?

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In any event, it’ll be many years before we reach a point where growth is no longer sustainable. I think higher education has at least another decade or two before assessment becomes systematized to the degree that we need to change our mission from “continuous improvement” to sustaining efficiency.

Until then, I’m going to keep plugging away. But I know what’s coming. I’m no longer deluding myself into believing this cycle of improvement is perpetual.

I’m no longer deluding myself into believing any cycle of improvement is perpetual.

And I’m done clawing and grinding my way towards some intangible goal of self improvement.

I’m done trying to write “one more book” than I wrote last year.

I’m done trying to improve my output on a conscious level.

My drive to be better has been ingrained into me to the degree that I don’t need to think about it anymore. It’s a naturalized function of being human.

I’m just going to keep doing: keep writing. Keep lifting. Keep running.

If my output improves, if my strength improves, great.

If it stays the same. Also great.

If it begins to diminish, I’ll try to mitigate that. If it doesn’t work, I’ll keep trying.

But I’m done with contrived improvement. Over-analytical improvement.

There comes a point-perhaps ironically-where you no longer have to think about growth.

It just happens. Until it doesn’t anymore.

And the less time you think about it happening, the less time you’ll spend beating yourself up when it doesn’t happen anymore.