The Philosophy of Monk Mode
Transforming Your Life with the Power of Purposeful Solitude
“All humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
Blaise Pascal.
Hi everyone,
I’ve spent the early part of the year in “Monk Mode”, and funnily enough, I’m reading this from my office, where I’ve slept for the last three nights.
In fact, I’m just gearing up to record this week’s podcast on monk mode, the culmination of this little marathon!
I isolated myself because I'm returning to the recording studio in a few days. When I woke at the beginning of the week, it dawned on me that there just wasn't enough time to tackle everything I needed to do.
So my question was, how can I expand time from within time?
And I realised that the only way to do this is to commit to living in the process itself.
It’s been an intense few days, and I’ve documented along the way, which I will post on my YouTube next week. Speaking of YouTube, I’m using it to #buildinpubic my new album. So, if you’d like to share the journey as I write the songs, you can find the link in the description.
However, today's podcast dives into the concept of Monk Mode. Specifically, I want to dissect the idea popularised by influencers and reconstruct it using the foundational principles handed down to us by the monks themselves.
This will involve how you can use it to improve your working life, how it has impacted my creative process and, toward the end, actionable steps about cultivating it.
To do this, I will draw from different examples of monk mode - whether from the monks themselves, Viktor Frankl or even Elon Musk.
WHAT IS MONK MODE?
So, first of all, what is “Monk Mode.”
Monk Mode is the decision to shut out all external distractions in favour of focusing on one core idea.
It’s a concept that has gained popularity, especially among productivity enthusiasts and self-improvement circles. This idea is inspired by monks' disciplined and minimalist lifestyle, focusing on deep work, self-reflection, and personal growth.
The goal of entering "Monk Mode" is to temporarily withdraw from distractions of the external world — social interactions, entertainment, and even the internet — to focus on achieving specific, meaningful goals.
But given it’s called Monk Mode, let’s start with the lives of the monks themselves, especially given that it’s been hijacked by the fanboys of grind culture, disconnecting it from the healthier and holistic potential of its origins.
The Desert Fathers were early Christian hermits living in the Egyptian desert. They often spoke of silence and solitude as the keys to divine revelation.
One of them, Abba Moses, advised, "Go, sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything."
The paradox of the modern condition is that we yearn for more time for ourselves, but when we finally get it, we find ourselves distracted, circling around our work like a moth to a flame.
I use the "moth to a flame” metaphor because though we’re pulled towards our work, we end up spiralling into distractions, leaving us drained when we’re ready to begin.
Simply put, distraction leaves us drained before we even start.
It illustrates a core tenet of Monk Mode.
You have to protect your energy.
MORNING ROUTINES?
So, for instance, one of the most popular modern ideas is having a morning routine.
Morning routines have blown up to such a degree that you read how people have done half an hour of meditation, written a gratitude journal, had a long walk, listened to a podcast and been to the gym all by the time they’ve got to work.
My version of Monk Mode challenges this idea.
Instead, it asks:
How do you enter your deepest creative space as quickly as possible in order to maximise the time you have until your energy wanes?
If a lengthy morning routine leaves you with little energy for your primary focus, it follows that you'll struggle to build meaningful momentum.
And when our lives lose momentum, we often feel like no matter what we do, we cannot seem to move our lives forward.
It’s a paradox, perhaps, but nothing drives us forward like the capacity to be still.
So, the instruction of “Monk Mode” offers a tougher lesson than what we find through the so-called “well-being” economy.
Abba Moses’s words, “Go, sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything”, encourage you to get into your deepest creative space and there to reside.
That space will be different for each of us, but it applies equally to creativity, business or our relationship with whatever the Godhead is to us.
So yes, the “Monk Mode” idea suggests taking examples from the monks themselves.
Now, to broaden our understanding, let’s look at what a Monk’s life might look like and see if we can pinch some ideas for our recalibrated version of “Monk Mode.”
LESSONS FROM THE MONKS
A Trappist monk and writer, Thomas Merton, once said, "Solitude is not something you must hope for in the future. Rather, it is a deepening of the present, and unless you look for it in the present, you will never find it."
From Merton, we learn that “Monk Mode” isn’t first about world rejection and saying no. It is much more about deepening our experience of the present and saying “yes”.
The opportunity in this is that as you start to see things clearer - your capacity to deal with your problems is heightened. And by working through your problems, you learn how to solve them for others, too.
Monk Mode becomes a value trigger because you emerge from it with something new to offer the world.
Seen this way, your problems are no longer problems but an opportunity.
So rather than rejecting the problems you have, you develop a sense of gratitude towards them.
This capacity to accept, co-exist and overcome great problems or challenges is a hallmark of all great leaders.
As Viktor Frankl put it:
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
So, the paradox is that your capacity to lead others is, in fact, developed in your own cell.
In solving the problems you discover there - whether spiritual, creative or professional, you acquire new skills, new insight, and new ways to approach the world.
PRESENCE
Another monk, a Carmelite called Brother Lawrence, wrote:
"We ought not to be weary of doing little things for the love of God, who regards not the greatness of the work, but the love with which it is performed."
The problem nowadays is that so much work in the modern world is performed out of expediency; that is, we do it simply because we want to get something from it.
For instance, grind culture considers its highest God not the way you do something but the WILL to get it done.
Modern society, driven by a desire to possess what others have, often imitates its heroes without genuine interest or love for the thing being copied.
The result is the pursuit of something without any actual love of the thing being pursued.
If an internal sense of purpose does not drive us, we get found out quickly when things get tough.
As Elon Musk put it:
“There are times when things don’t go well, and then that’s quite discouraging for sure. And then it’s difficult to proceed with the same level of enthusiasm. But I do think that the things we are doing are pretty important to the future.”
The implication is that if your motivation is beyond yourself, it will carry you through whatever hardship your path has in store for you.
Brother Lawrence’s perspective is that God is not interested in the work's greatness but in the love with which it is performed.
So, one has to consider one’s motivation for entering “Monk Mode.”
If you’re using it as a means to an end, that is, to get something done, then you are divorced from the “why”, which is your main driving force.
And if you don’t know WHY you are doing something, you will likely lose interest in that which you are doing.
It is, after all, hard to endure a great trial if you don’t know the purpose of the suffering.
So Brother Lawrence would counsel us not just to make a practice of entering Monk Mode but to consider, more importantly, the practice of what you are doing within it.
Seen this way, entering Monk Mode is just a framework.
We are saying “no” to certain distractions not because we want to get something but because we want to be something.
So the question I ask you is -
Who are you while you work?
And what is the experience you are having within it?
If you are constantly resisting what you are doing, it may be that life is quietly telling you that it’s time to re-evaluate, pivot or make a change.
My reading of Brother Lawrence is that if you are entering “Monk Mode” without a love of the work you are performing, you will likely find yourself feeling resistant and even miserable.
Yes, some work is hard. But as Alex Hormozi says:
But you have to love the doing for the sake of the doing itself.
If not, you might find that you are simply doing the wrong thing or for the wrong motivation.
SACRIFICE
I go back to the monks' teachings because I think that many people enter “Monk Mode” with the belief that just by sacrificing, they will be successful and happy.
You can only truly sacrifice something when your love for what you're offering exceeds your love for what you're sacrificing.
So, when it comes to Monk Mode, remember that you are not entering it exclusively to get something.
You are entering it to ritualise an act of love.
By deepening your sense of the present, as Merton suggests, and amplifying the love in your work, as Brother Lawrence advises, you create a strong foundation that can enhance your business and your entire life.
HOW TO USE MONK MODE
When considering Monk Mode on a deeper level, it stimulates this question:
What’s the most important single thing in your life you wish to develop?
Are you ready to bring the same solemnity of spirit to your life that a monk brings to his conversations with God?
What I enjoy about Monk Mode is that you bring the seriousness of a religious pursuit to your own life.
In an age disconnected from God, you can make a North Star your anchor to your deepest self.
Since I started considering my work a spiritual pursuit, it has impacted every aspect of my life.
For instance, enhancing my concentration makes me more present for loved ones, enriching the depth and quality of my work.
Thus, rather than viewing success as a linear path toward a goal, I see it as a feedback loop of love.
The more I concentrate, the more present I am, the more present I am, the more I love, the more I love, the deeper I feel, the deeper I feel, the greater the access I have to the miracle that is life.
I've seen this cycle positively impact my life, especially in my songwriting, which now not only improves but also draws from a deeper understanding of the world.
Each of us is born with potential, but it's a lifelong task to protect and nurture it.
Many today feel unfulfilled or as though they are not living up to their potential.
Adopting "Monk Mode" as a philosophy means committing to living up to one's potential and recognising that as the highest value.
As such, I love the metaphor of “monk mode” because it answers a deeper longing in me.
That longing is about wanting to live a fulfilled life and the solemn decision to pursue it.
A FULFILLED LIFE
So, how do we live a fulfilled life?
Well, the first step towards this is to consider what meaning is to you.
To answer this, we can only begin with the solemnity of our innermost conversation.
We hate to admit it, but most of us flitter around this question, yes, the big one: what is the meaning of life?
I want to read a paragraph from a book I’m reading by Richard Powers called “The Overstory” where he recounts a scene in Tolstoy’s War and Peace:
“The Prince-hero goes down in the middle of an immense battle. He lies paralysed on his back on the cold earth, with chaos all around. Nothing above the soldier but sky, lofty sky. He can’t move; he can only look up. The hero lies, wondering how he could have missed the central truth of existence until that moment: the whole world and all the hearts of men are as nothing, lined up underneath the infinite blue.”
The truth is that many of us flutter around our lives so much that we never even consider the question, “What is the meaning of our life?”.
If you’re thinking, “Yeah, yeah, I’ll get to that later.” I’d counsel you to reconsider.
Inspired by my hero, Joseph Campbell, I took time off after the pandemic to explore the question. I didn’t know then that it would ask for two years of my life and lead to my best work, “The Isolation Diaries”. However, those two years reformatted me on the inside out, and I now feel a sense of dread that I may have only taken this time at the end of my life rather than within it. Instead, it brought me into the heart of my life and to the doorstep of my future.
Living like a monk in my van, far from civilisation, I realised how the modern world fragments our psychological space by monetising the fragmentation of our consciousness.
It made me realise that to protect my inner experience, I needed to get serious about how to guardrail it.
This need to guard rail provoked my interest in “Monk Mode” and my realisation of the extent to which Grind Culture hijacks its potential.
This is why I bring the idea of “Monk Mode” back to the concept of the hermits and the monks.
To experience a deeper conversation with God, the monk builds a space where he protects what he values most - the hermitry.
So ask yourself:
How are you protecting your inner conversation?
Many of us want so much from the world that we focus our attention on the world itself.
The monk would answer that if you want to bring something to the world, you have to first find something of value in yourself that you can bring to it.
Delivering value to others, though, necessitates the bravery to engage with our own meaning first-
From our purpose, we cultivate talents, refine skills, and discover ways to contribute something new to the world.
It's no coincidence that many historical figures who've left a significant mark experienced periods of asceticism, world renunciation, or personal trials.
Consider Nelson Mandela's 27 years in prison, Jesus Christ's 40 days in the desert, or Buddha's enlightenment after 49 days of meditation.
If the meaning of life involves pursuing our greatest potential, then it is our task to meet ourselves first to understand that potential.
The question we have to ask ourselves is: do we have the courage to undergo that journey?
WHAT MONK MODE MEANS FOR ME
At the start of each year, I like to go into a time of asceticism. I began doing this ten years ago because I noticed a pattern that I was always at my most down in January and February.
I realised that, on some level, it was because I was resisting the nature of the season around me.
Deciding to lean into the season, I discovered that mirroring winter's conditions with an ascetic mindset transformed my emotional state.
I started this one with a clean slate for the first time in a few years.
I realised there was a lot that I was excited to explore and that I was entering a period of trying new things.
However, in parallel, I was aware I was in danger of trying to do too much, so I decided to enter “monk mode.”
I read a lovely quote from Greg Mckeown, who shared this realisation before writing his book. To quote, he needed "a routine that acknowledged the difficulty of the task."
To tackle something more challenging than ever, I realised I had to change my approach to work radically.
This is what got me thinking more about the lives of monks themselves.
Consequently, I created a playbook outlining my approach for this phase of my life.
I was essentially defining the parameters for a higher standard of living, which involved embracing the core principle of monastic life: sacrificing one thing for another.
The essence of this sacrifice meant giving up short-term comforts for longer-term fulfilment.
I made five essential decisions while in this period of monk mode.
First, I gave up alcohol.
Second, I declined any social engagements in the week.
Third, I began a palaeolithic sleeping pattern.
Fourth, I would only go online for set times during the day.
Fifth, no travelling.
Unlike the modern version of Monk Mode, my goal was not to achieve an end but to deepen my experience of my work.
What surprised me was how my sense of meaning deepened.
Renunciation hasn’t led to a feeling of discomfort but to a heightened capacity to co-exist with the moment I’m in.
And though my social diary has been stripped down, I've experienced a feeling far from social alienation.
On the contrary, my presence with loved ones feels heightened, not due to conscious effort but due to a deeper connection to the rhythm of love that binds us.
Monk Mode hasn't isolated me from my friendships; it has made them more vividly present, even when we're apart.
At unexpected moments, the people I love open doors in the corridor of my heart, and there have been many times when I’ve been brought to tears by their sudden presence in my day.
In the paradox of modern life, where distance often separates us from loved ones, I've discovered that I'm more connected to them, not less.
MONK MODE & MY WORK
In terms of my work, the question that most people would ask is, has Monk Mode helped my productivity?
However, as I’ve tried to illustrate, a true understanding of “Monk Mode” is not about an outcome but a way of being.
Success, to me, is not about crushing my goals.
Success, to me, is about the courage to live my life deeper.
Am I alive in the present?
Am I learning new things?
Do I feel energised, connected to the world, elevated by the sacrifice, moved by the promise and hungry for the adventure?
There's a straightforward measure of success: Is our cynicism growing as we age, or is it diminishing?
All this said, yes, I am experiencing a boost in my output, but it’s an outcome of my internal dialogue rather than a product of my will.
I am putting in more hours, but only because I have far more energy than usual.
As discussed in my podcast on “Deep Work”, I have zero interest in grinding and working when I feel unenergised.
It appears that much of the world overlooks the fundamental truth: we perform better when well-rested and experience greater happiness when energised.
Feeling rested, energised, and happy is a rich reward for a small amount of sacrifice.
The truth is that our modern consciousness is structured around a craving for frequent, intense dopamine rushes.
It means we are forever bound to the short term, resulting in frequent feelings of anxiety, failure, and self-doubt when daily challenges arise.
My experience since the beginning of the year has left me in a far more robust state of mind.
Because I feel connected to meaning, I have a sense that there is a purpose to my work.
I experience this purpose as a continual article of faith in what I am attempting to put into the world.
When I receive a positive kickback from that, it’s rewarding.
Yet, my happiness stems from feeling truly alive in the act of giving itself.
It’s a strange circle, but the more I sacrifice, the more I can give, and the more I can give, the more I seem to get back.
Unintentionally, I've begun the year embodying a state of mind that I believe the original hermits might themselves endorse.
If your joy stems from what you can give, living becomes a manifestation of success rather than acquiring an end product.
In a world where so much is beyond our control, adopting a mindset focused on the process rather than outcomes is transformative.
Our mindset is no longer contingent on external achievements but on the doing itself.
Given the pervasive influence of financial success and social media metrics on our self-perception, this approach seems far more durable.
CONCLUSIONS
My conclusion is that “Monk Mode” is a worthy practice to explore because there’s so much to learn from an approach which draws from the knowledge of the ages.
In a world where we live in a storm of self-perpetuating amnesia, the wisdom of the ancients offers safe refuge.
The fallacy of the modern version of “Monk Mode” is that it entirely misses the point that its reward is the inculcation of a deeper state of being rather than a temporary and transient goal.
The purpose of our efforts is not to move the world by one singular effort of will but rather, as Buddha put it, to participate joyfully in its sufferings.
So, my final takeaways are:
1) Monk mode is not about outcomes but about process.
2) It is not about doing but about being
3) It’s a state of mind rather more than a period of time
4) It’s about reframing sacrifice as not the giving up of happiness but as its reward.
5) A concerted time of “monk mode” is a great way to build its ritual into your life as a habit
Thank you for reading, dear friends, and if you’d like to see how I use Monk Mode, don’t forget to jump over to my YouTube and subscribe for the upcoming video.
Jim
The Long Road Home
This was the final song I wrote for “The Isolation Diaries”. It was a last-second decision to record it, but I felt I needed a song to close the project.
I’d lived with the question of mortality for the longest time. It brought me to the doorstep of my future and the conscious affirmation of how much I wanted to live in the time available to me.
It is one of life’s great mysteries that out of our desolation comes the revival of hope. In this, “The Isolation Diaries” was the great pilgrimage of my life.
The cry at the end releases everything I’d been through.
And a vow to live as fully as I can.
If that means taking the long road home, then so be it.
Thank you for your support. If you’d like to watch the film and listen to the unreleased songs, they are available today for paid subscribers.
Lyrics for "The Long Road Home" On the journey of becoming who you are You touch the moon and then you touch the stars And you know that anywhere you roam You’re gonna take the long, gonna take the long road home Oh, there’s the mystery The shivering sky and the sweetest melody I’m alive and everything is new As the path that I walk is at another fork Oh my my, I’m gonna take, I’m gonna take the long road home. You’re a traveller on the greatest pilgrimage You drink with devils they’re the ones you like to kiss Pour champagne upon the river styx Shouting at the gods that the lightning’s gonna miss In the stillness there is something that I found A type of power that I’m holding in my hands There’s a reason you are digging in the dirt Cause the diamond that you find Is the thing you have inside Oh my my, I’m gonna take, I’m gonna take the long road home.
I've been living a Monk Mode morning routine, but with coffee.
This was a good read.