What is Monk Mode?

If you’re like me and you spend too much time surfing the web, you might have come across the phrase “monk mode”.

Does it mean that young people around the world are retreating to monasteries in the Himalayas to disavow the material world and live a life of meditation and solitude? Not exactly.

The idea of ‘monk mode’ initially came about on male-focused self-improvement forums. More recently, it was popularized on TikTok and YouTube by influencers promising the solution to all your problems.

The idea and appeal of monk mode is quite simple. Maybe you have some long-term goals or projects that you want to work on, but every evening when you come home from work you just want to scroll on Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok. In many ways, it’s a backlash against ever-present social media and smart phones.

Our desire to better ourselves is thwarted by highly-addictive technology — or even by our social obligations to our friends, family, colleagues, and community. Monk mode is offered as a solution to this.

One might decide to go into ‘monk mode’ for 100 days. During that time, they could dedicate themselves to:

• Waking up early

• Exercising daily

• Not using social media or smartphones

• Practicing a skill or craft, whether it be something fun or creative like an instrument or something professional useful like computer programming

• Limiting socialization

What is Monk Mode?

The short answer: it depends. It would be a great idea for anyone to wake up earlier, exercise more regularly, reduce their social media use and focus on achieving their goals.

But those things don’t require us to limit our in-person socialization with friends and family. Nor do they require us to adopt a new mindset of being a ‘monk’ who must seclude themselves from society in order to achieve their goals — or to become the person they want to be.

The last point is key: the desire to enter ‘monk mode’ is often based on a sense that “I’m not who I want to be.” Social media exposes us to hustle culture influencers who claim that working 14 hours a day is the only way to be happy, healthy, and wealthy.

Many people (particularly impressionable young men who aren’t satisfied with themselves or their lot in life) don’t realize that this message is bullshit. I believe that social interaction (when it’s healthy and with people who care about us) is nourishing and necessary for a happy and fulfilling life.

Hustle culture makes normal people think that they’re not doing enough and that they should neglect their relationships in order to pursue radical self-improvement.

This meme is the perfect example of that misguided attitude:

Sounds great. But what about time for family obligations? Personal health? Spending time with current friends or making new ones? Trying new activities? Participating in community events?

Some interpretations of “monk mode” create a black-and-white worldview where anything that is not furthering self-improvement is seen as a waste of time and destructive to an image of the self that people want to achieve.

But many monk mode proponents don’t realize that it is just an image. Even if one spends six months in solitude, working out twice a day and building a million-dollar company from their one-bedroom apartment, what’s the endgame? Most of us think that we want to “make it” financially so that we have more time to spend with our friends and family — so does it make sense to cut those people off in order to have a better chance at achieveing those goals?

Healthy self-improvement

We all want to improve ourselves in the new year, but let’s focus on doing so in a way that doesn’t create a zero-sum mindset where any distraction or source of pleasure is seen as bad. Not every proponent of “monk mode” is pushing this narrative, but toxic elements of hustle culture have certainly infiltrated the monk movement.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to listen to Gregorian Chants while reading three self-help books simultaneously.

ART OF THE DAY

Thank you for reading. Please reply to this email if you have any thoughts or feedback.

Yours,
Dan