Every Saturday morning, while the moon is still in the sky and the birds haven't yet started chirping, an unmarked white van pulls up to the gates at Fort Grundy to drop off a very special package:

The Financial Times.

Last weekend, as Baby Grundy was merrily playing with a rubber giraffe and Lozzadog Lauren was wrestling with her hair-dryer, I grabbed a coffee, pulled up a pew and reached for the just-delivered paper.

Despite my FT subscription, I actually have very little interest in reading about economics and market trends. Yes, I work for a bank. But I couldn’t give two hoots about interest rate fluctuations or the price of tea in Timbuktu.

Instead, I get the FT delivered each week for the bridge column, the chess column and the fabulous FT crossword.

But as I grabbed the paper this time, a story on the front page caught my eye.

It was about a lady called Qian Zhimin who’d just been sentenced to 12 years in prison for money laundering.

A few lines in, the article started to get really wild.

Turns out Qian Zhimin had fled China to rent a mansion in the leafy suburbs of North London to run one of history’s biggest, most outrageous cryptocurrency Ponzi Schemes. At one point, she had over 100,000 investors sending her money which she embezzled to grow her own Bitcoin stash while she threw huge banquets and jetted off on tropical holidays.

It gets wilder though.

When the police raided her mansion, they discovered scribbled notes where Qian had laid out grand plans to start her own bank, butter up a British Duke, buy a Swedish Castle and even become Queen of Liberland (a microstate on the Croatian-Serbian border).

Ridiculous, for sure.

But it hit close to home too.

Not because I’m embezzling Bitcoin from the windy turrets at Fort Grundy. 

But I do recognise this idea of robbing Peter to pay Paul in my own life.

In fact, I think a lot of us do this. A lot of us treat our careers in a similar way to Qian’s wobbly Bitcoin empire and almost run a type of Ponzi Scheme on ourselves.

What do I mean by that?

Well, there are last minute deadlines to hit and huge decisions to be made. So we borrow tomorrow’s energy and spend it today to get a shot of productivity. Then the next day, when we’re missing the energy we’ve already pinched from our piggy bank, we rob our wellbeing from the day after that and maybe from the day after that too.

The hustle and grind always needs fresh capital, so we start to pull in more investors.

We raid our evenings, our weekends, our sleep, our peace of mind, our partner’s goodwill and whatever else we can find to keep the whole operation propped up.

There might even be some rewards along the way.

Perhaps we have some banquets and sun-soaked holidays of our own. And for a moment or two, it looks like life is going great.

So great, in fact, that we start to invest even more.

I'm tired, we say, but look at what I'm achieving! Maybe I'll get a promotion! Maybe I'll launch that startup! Maybe I'll buy a Swedish castle, start a bank and become Queen of Liberland myself!

But just like a Ponzi Scheme, at some point it all comes crashing down. 

At some point, our bodies file for bankruptcy.

Perhaps that sounds bleak and overdramatic. 

But then again, I’ve experienced this collapse firsthand. I know the feeling of waking up drained, pushing away the people I love and staring blankly at my laptop as a never-ending stream of urgent emails flood my inbox. 

I had to take a six month sabbatical and then quit my job to pay back that debt.

Of course, there is another way to approach your work.

A way that doesn't require constantly raiding your reserves.

I’m not talking about some miracle productivity hack or superhuman discipline.

I’m simply talking about understanding how your brain actually works and working with it instead of against it.

This way, when you do get that promotion or become the new Queen of Liberland, you do it sustainably and with your peace of mind intact.

In fact, I’ll venture you’re much more likely to get that promotion or your Liberland coronation when you stop running a Ponzi Scheme on yourself and start to see how you’re already running a surplus.

Curious how solvent you really are?

Here’s where to go next if so:

https://waitinglist.followingfulfilment.com