Working Outside Eden

You want more revenue, more staff, more systems. But when someone asks what you want your life to look like, the answer is always less. There's a reason for that tension, and it goes way back.

In the beginning…

In the beginning, it’s always the same. Most of the work I do as a marketing strategist and advisor starts with me helping the client define “success.”

The process goes like this. I ask them what they’d love to see at a specific point in the future for their business. We group our discussion around three buckets: 1) external (leads, conversions, offers, etc.), 2) internal (staff, systems, space), and 3) revenue.

This worked wonders for two reasons. First, I guide them toward specific measurables for every item they’d love to see across all three categories. The result is, “By [this calendar date] you’d ideally love to see [this specific measurable] attained.” Second, putting all three next to each other enables the business owner and key stakeholders to spot gaps.

This is where the classic, ‘Wait a minute…’ aha’s hit. “We need to bump that revenue up if we want to add 3 project managers,” for example.

I kept this approach for a while, but then I added a significant wrinkle. The wrinkle is the result of my unique experiences as a longtime pastor. “You can tell the man he no longer holds the title of ‘pastor’ (because of budget cuts), but you can’t take the pastor out of the man.” So the saying goes.

The significant ‘pastoral’ wrinkle?

I added a fourth category centered around the question, “What do you want your life to look like?”

And that’s when the predictable pattern emerged. It’s always the same. Just swap out the client.

The pattern looks like this:

The client defines “success” in the external marketing bucket, and it’s more. The internal bucket, that’s more, too—more or different staff, space, systems, etc. The revenue bucket, cha-ching. Definitely more.

But, the newly added Life category, always less. ALWAYS.

To break it down, they want more, plus more, plus more, to equal less. The math looks like this: more + more + more = less.

To be fair, I’m no different when the tables are turned. Whether in a mastermind or over coffee with a colleague, when asked, that’s what I want too.

We Were Built for More. So Why Does More Feel Like a Trap?

Where does this peculiar human predicament come from? Wanting more to bring less.

Here are two observations from my current meditations coming from the foundational stories of the Genesis scroll.

We Are Designed Desire Factories

In Genesis 2, the first human is made in the dirt of the wilderness, endowed with Yahweh’s life-giving breath, and placed in a garden at the center of a place called Delight (Eden). Interestingly, the human is fashioned with needs from the get-go.

First, the garden has built-in beauty meant to map onto the human’s designed desire for beauty.

*Gen 2.9a Out of the ground the LORD God caused every tree to grow that is pleasing (חָמַד [cha.mad], to desire) to the sight and good for food; *

Second, the human is designed to desire and need food to sustain life. In a regular rhythm, the human has a non-negotiable desire for a delicious sustenance outside of himself/herself.

Third, the human is designed to desire and thrive in relationship. It’s Yahweh who notices the lone human in the garden of delight is ‘not good‘ (טוֹב [tov]). The lone human, in fact, cannot fulfill the mandate of Genesis 1 to be ‘fruitful, multiply, fill, and subdue.’

Yahweh makes the one become two, so the two can become one.

You Have Endless Desires

Pause and think about your own desires. If we sat down together over coffee, and I asked, “What do you want?” you could go for hours, days, weeks…a lifetime.

So desires are not only ‘ok,’ they’re good.

But those desires were meant to be managed together in unity and integrity according to Yahweh’s life-giving wisdom of good (tov) and bad (ra’). When the humans attempt to manage their desires according to their own wisdom, informed by the snake, they are choosing a future of death.

From Gardeners to Shepherds: The Death of ‘Work-Life Balance’

The first humans had work to do, namely, to extend the garden everywhere. They were to subdue the land by harnessing the baked-in potential. But the consequence for violating the life-giving divine command was exile into the wilderness environment.

Gardens are associated with permanence. Gardens don’t travel. Exiles do.

As the story continues outside the garden, shepherds replace gardeners as the primary occupation. Cain is a gardener. Abel is a shepherd. Abel, the chosen, innocent one, is murdered. As a result, repeating the pattern of his parents, Cain, the gardener, forfeited his calling.

Genesis 4.11–12 Now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. When you cultivate the ground, it will no longer yield its strength to you; you will be a wanderer and a drifter on the land.”

For the exiled humans, the land would now work against them. The land could still produce, but it would be far more difficult.

More poignantly, the land will make you its slave and work you to death.

The Death of ‘Work-Life Balance’

This is life outside the garden. There are moments where work feels like play. Where work produces an abundance of output far beyond the input we give it. But those are rare exemptions, a break in the norm. Our typical experience is reflected in our popular statements associated with “work.”

Grinding. Working around the clock. Working our fingers to the bone. She’s gonna work herself to death.

Those phrases come from the lips of exiles.

This is why the pattern I mentioned at the top will continue with the next client, and the next. We’re built for an abundance that exceeds our desires. We’re designed for a future we cannot manufacture.

Our desire for more + more + more to equal less—less striving, stress, and slaving away—is like a hunger pain.

Our work ‘working us over’ is the sign that we’re outside of Eden.