End‑gaining is supposed to help us succeed, but in my case it nearly broke me.
Week 3: Day 11 – Myth
“This end‑gaining business has got to such a point — it’s worse than a drug.” FM Alexander, Teaching Aphorisms, #33
There is a myth in our culture that speed equals competence. That juggling multiple tasks or projects is admirable. That the person who can carry the most, the fastest, with the least rest, is the one who is truly succeeding. Alexander would have called this end‑gaining: the compulsive drive to reach the goal as quickly and directly as possible, no matter the cost. It is not strategy. It is like a drug. And we’ve been trained so that we don’t feel good unless we get our fix.
I didn’t know the word end‑gaining when I was thirty, but I knew the feeling. I was working at the BBC in a job 198 other people had applied for. I thought that meant I was lucky, or special. It took me years to realise it meant something else: it meant I was easily replaceable. The job was relentless, office hours, evenings and weekends and being on call before and after office hours and at weekends. And because it was all under one job description I believed I should be able to do this, without strain, sickness or complaint.
One evening after a particularly busy patch, I was in the kitchen with my boyfriend and my sister. I was chopping carrots, stirring rice, making tea, trying to do everything at once and doing none of it well. They offered to help, of course they did, but they didn’t chop the carrots the way I wanted them, so I took the knife back. They didn’t stir the rice quite right, so I took the spoon back. I was breathless, tense, rushing, unable to stop. Everything felt urgent. Everything felt like my responsibility. I was flailing.
At one point I saw them look at each other with concern. That small glance cracked something open in me. For a brief moment I saw myself through their eyes. I put the knife down. I cried, and went to bed.
On my last day at work, a senior manager said, almost casually, “The problem with your job is that it squeezes you dry like a lemon.” I remember the shock of that. They knew the job was unsustainable! And they’d watched me get squeezed dry. I had been trying to survive it as if I were the problem. I am a human being, not a lemon. A lemon can’t have the juice put back in, and humans don’t thrive when they’re squeezed dry for too long.
It took a long time to learn to stop even squeezing myself. This habit was so ingrained. It took a long time to pause enough to begin the rehydrating process. To learn to look after myself moment by moment, so I wasn’t running on empty or living only for the goal.
These days, I take pleasure in the journey. The sensation of the knife cutting through carrots. The texture. The sharpness. The quiet joy of being able to stop at will. To choose self‑care first. To choose coordination before action. Life is easier now. Richer. Full of ordinary, extra‑ordinary things. As a choir song goes, “Remember the little things, ordinary little things, extra‑ordinary, ordinary things.”
I didn’t know the word end‑gaining then. But I knew what it felt like to be driven by urgency. Now I know that stopping isn’t failure. Stopping is the doorway to a life where I can feel the small, ordinary things again – the ones that make everything else worth living.