I don’t think life is meant to be this complicated.
Most days, the exhaustion doesn’t come from physical effort — it comes from mental clutter. Too many decisions, too much noise, too many things demanding attention without offering anything real in return.
What I’ve learned over time is that the fastest way out of that feeling isn’t rest in the modern sense. It’s work. Simple work. Honest work. The kind that doesn’t require explanation or optimization.
Digging in the dirt.
Fixing something that’s broken.
Maintaining tools so they work when you need them.
There’s something grounding about physical work that modern life can’t replace. When your hands are busy, your mind settles. Problems don’t vanish, but they stop shouting. That’s part of what I was getting at in the difference between rest and escaping — not all downtime actually restores you.
Simple work has clear boundaries. You start, you do the thing, and eventually you’re done. There’s no inbox. No algorithm. No performance metrics. Just effort and outcome.
I notice this most when I’m working in the yard or maintaining things around the house. Even small jobs carry weight. Cleaning up a space. Preparing the garden. Getting equipment ready before winter. It all creates a quiet sense of order that spills into the rest of life.
Modern society separates us from this kind of work. We outsource it, automate it, or avoid it altogether. And in doing so, we lose a source of stability. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that anxiety and burnout are so common in a world where many people never see the results of their labor.
Simple work builds capability instead of dependence. When you fix something yourself, grow something yourself, or learn how a system actually works, you regain confidence. You stop feeling so fragile. That mindset shows up again and again in the way I think about homesteading — not as a trend, but as a return to responsibility and skill. I touched on that idea in what homesteading really means to me (and what it doesn’t).
This kind of work doesn’t need to be extreme. You don’t need land or livestock to benefit from it. A small garden. Basic maintenance. Learning to make a few things from scratch. Even hobbies that involve patience and effort carry the same effect — something I explored in why simple hobbies matter more than we think.
Simple work slows life down in the best way. It pulls you out of abstraction and back into reality. You stop thinking so much about how you feel and start noticing what needs to be done.
And somehow, in that process, things feel lighter.
I don’t believe simple work fixes everything. But I do believe it fixes more than endless thinking ever will.
– Just a note from the yard.