Overwork, Curiosity, and Sympathy: The Modern Dilemma

“Is this modern world of ours a rising civilization or an exhausted one? Its trouble and complexity are caused by the highest form of consciousness. Overwork, curiosity and sympathy – our modern vices.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power

Read time: 4 minutes

I have incredibly smart friends who send me profound quotes all the time. Last week, Mo Dhaliwal (one of the sharpest minds I know) WhatsApped me this Nietzsche quote. Mo runs a branding agency that has done awe-inspiring work for brands like the Self-Realization Fellowship (Yogananda), YYoga, Ocean Wise, SexyHair, and countless others.

People who do great work have often developed a capacity to think deeply and think differently. Mo took the last sentence of this quote and broke it down in a way that felt like he was solving a modern-day puzzle—as if unscrambling a New York Times crossword.

Here’s how he unpacked Nietzsche’s words:

• Overwork: Self-negation, the act of forgetting oneself.

• Curiosity: A vague, directionless interest in things that never deepens into meaningful obsession.

• Sympathy: A generalized compassion for all, yet a refusal—or perhaps a lack of courage—to discern between good and bad.

If you’ve spent time around Groundwork, you’ll know how deeply these three points resonate with the work of staying out of survival mode and focusing on what truly matters.

The Existential Crisis of Overwork

When we begin to unravel how profoundly overworked we are, we often hit an existential crisis. That moment when we ask ourselves, What the hell is this all for? When we realize we’ve sacrificed our well-being in favor of grinding it out, without even knowing the end goal. More money? More achievement?

This self-negation—this forgetting of ourselves—is at the root of the crisis. When we examine our survival patterns, this truth becomes painfully clear.

Then, there’s curiosity. Our constant pushing, firefighting, and the perpetual sense that we’re never doing enough or being enough kills our natural curiosity. We rarely allow our minds to wander or daydream because we believe productivity is the answer. We think relief lies in doing more.

Yet, creativity remains dormant inside us, waiting. We crave the meaning and aliveness that comes from allowing spontaneity to take hold of our minds.

And sympathy? We don’t even have time for it. We can’t extend it to ourselves because we’re so busy being hard on ourselves. And if we can’t have grace for ourselves, how can we offer it to anyone else?

Beyond that, we lack the bandwidth to discern good from bad—even in ourselves. We get caught in a cycle of self-judgment, oscillating between I’m the worst and I’m the best, never pausing to make micro-adjustments: the attitude we gave our partner, the slightly pointed email we sent a colleague, the piece of trash we could have picked up but didn’t. Exhaustion makes us step over these small choices all day long.

The Answer Lies Within the Problem

If overwork, curiosity, and sympathy are higher forms of consciousness, then isn’t the solution to our exhaustion also found in them?

If you practice Groundwork, you’re already working with these states of consciousness. You’re learning to manage your peace of mind, open your access to creativity, and cultivate true compassion for yourself and others. You’re learning never to step over what is right for you. You’re developing discernment—recognizing what is survival-based and what is clarity-based. You are both productive and peaceful.

Stay in the game. Reduce exhaustion by resting more. Expand your curiosity by working with your survival pattern and your system. Cultivate true sympathy by staying gently in the practices that nourish your work and life. Extend that same sympathy to others, knowing their struggle as your own.

We are here for the reminders.