An Open Letter to the Modern Achiever

Designed by @bishallama_

On Why You Can’t Stop Moving

You wake up.

You check your phone.

You stretch.

You plan your day.

You tick boxes,

chase goals, log steps, drink water,

meditate, post progress, repeat.

To the outside world, you're doing everything right.

You're building habits. Staying consistent. Getting better.

But deep down, something feels… off.

And I want to talk to that part of you.

The quiet voice you drown out with activity.

Let me tell you a story.

Zoe Chance is a professor at Yale. She teaches “Mastering Influence and Persuasion” to future business leaders.

She holds a doctorate from Harvard. She’s no amateur when it comes to understanding how human behavior works.

Yet one day, she found herself climbing stairs at 2 AM, alone, in her basement.

Why?

Because her pedometer  — offered her triple points if she completed just one more challenge.

Twenty steps became forty.

Then eighty.

Then thousands.

She walked more steps than it takes to climb the Empire State Building.

Not because she needed to.

But because she couldn’t stop.

This wasn’t fitness.

It was compulsion dressed as improvement.

She’d fallen into a trap — not set by accident, but by brilliant behavioral designers who had engineered her motivation using every trick in the book.

She’d taught those tricks.

Now she was a victim of them.

Zoe later said, “No! It is Satan in your pocket!”

This isn’t a blog about a pedometer.

It’s about what lives inside all of us.

The painful truth?

We’re not addicted to our devices.

We’re addicted to escaping discomfort.

We don’t chase goals for the joy of winning.

We chase them to avoid feeling worthless without them.

Like Zoe, we are walking in circles — just in fancier ways.

Steps. Metrics. KPIs.

Habits. Hustle. Streaks.

All wrapped in a language of self-improvement,

but often rooted in self-avoidance.

So here’s the question:

What are you walking in circles for?

Who are you trying to impress?

What pain are you running from?

Because most of our “productivity” isn’t productive.

It’s motion sickness.

It’s being allergic to stillness.

To boredom.

To silence.

You think you need motivation?

No.

You need to stop being terrified of doing nothing.

Because until you stop…

You’ll keep climbing your metaphorical stairs at 2 AM.

Worn out.

Alone.

Trapped in a game you never meant to play.

The way out?

Stop moving for the sake of motion.

Sit with the pain.

Listen to it.

Understand it.

Then — and only then — start designing a life around intentional action rather than compulsive movement.

Don’t just escape your discomfort.

Understand it.

Own it.

Transcend it.

Because that’s where real change begins.

The Pool Table Analogy

If you’ve ever played a game of pool, you know what sends the colored balls into the pockets:

it’s not just the stick, and it’s not just the cue ball.

Yes — the stick strikes the white cue ball.

The white cue ball hits the others.

But if you zoom out, you realize the real force behind it all: the player.

The cue ball is just the middleman.

The stick, just a tool.

The root cause?

Intention.

Action.

The human hand that set it all in motion.

Now think about your life.

That phone in your hand.

That app you can’t stop checking.

That Netflix series you swore you’d stop after “just one more episode.”

Are those things the reason you’re distracted?

Not quite.

They’re the cue balls.

The sticks.

But you — you’re the player.

The Illusion of Blame

It’s easy to blame the tools.

“It’s social media’s fault.”

“My phone is ruining my focus.”

“This app is designed to be addictive.”

Well of course it is.

Sure, those tools are powerful.

But they’re not the root cause.

The root cause is internal.

When Zoe Chance was climbing stairs at 2 AM, she wasn’t just chasing points.

She was escaping pain.

Behind every compulsion is a discomfort we’re trying to mute.

Zoe later revealed the real trigger behind her obsessive walking:

She was in the most stressful phase of her life —

Fighting for a job.

Fighting for a marriage.

Fighting to stay composed.

Hair loss. Insomnia.

Heart palpitations (which quite recently happened to me too.)

A failing relationship she couldn’t talk about.

A job search filled with rejections and uncertainty.

In a world spiraling out of control, her pedometer gave her certainty.

It became the one game she could actually win.

The one number she could move.

The one space where the rules were clear.

So she walked.

And walked.

And walked.

But she wasn’t walking to be healthy.

She was walking to escape.

And that’s the truth no one wants to face:

We don’t binge distractions because we’re weak.

We binge them because we’re hurting.

Distraction isn’t about the tool.

It’s about the trigger.

We blame phones, emails, apps, games, and news.

But those are just modern cue balls.

The root cause is us.

Our pain.

Our anxiety.

Our craving for control in a world that rarely gives it.

Distraction isn’t a tech problem (partially it is).

It’s a coping mechanism.

And unless we deal with the root cause, we’ll just keep swapping one distraction for another:

Delete Instagram? You’ll scroll Twitter.

Log off Twitter? You’ll binge YouTube.

Quit YouTube? You’ll “research” things on Google for hours.

It’s not about the thing.

It’s about what you’re trying not to feel.

So what now?

You don’t fight distraction by fighting the distraction.

You fight it by understanding the urge behind it.

What are you trying to avoid?

What fear are you covering up?

What pain are you numbing?

Until you answer those questions, every focus tactic is just a Band-Aid.

The real work begins inward.

Zoe eventually faced the truth.

She left the marriage.

She landed her dream job.

She stopped walking in circles — literally and metaphorically.

Not because the pedometer disappeared.

But because she finally saw what she was running from.

Now it’s your turn.

Stop blaming the cue ball.

Look at the player.

Look at yourself.

Not with judgment.

But with honest curiosity.

Because the moment you stop blaming the tools…

You reclaim the power to build something better with them.