We’re going to talk a bit about depression and maybe about the state of the world as it is now, but this is not about wallowing in grief or pointing fingers. You can get me drunk in a bar and I’ll tell you all about my politics, but whatever side of the aisle you’re on or whichever side of the Atlantic you call home, if you’re a human being with empathy, you might be having days when you just don’t feel so great.
For Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill, two transatlantic leaders a century and an ocean apart, “not feeling so great” was something of an understatement.
Lincoln suffered from clinical depression, or what he called his “melancholy”, while Churchill had his “black dog” and was widely reported as having bipolar disorder.
Now, we live in an age where nuance is as dead as these lads, so let me be clear when I say that I’m not shying away from, or hanging a lantern on any of their other personal or political aspects, or what team they supported and whether that’s the same team you support now. Look in the cupboard of any outlier and out will fall a bunch of skeletons. So let’s just take that as read and I can crank up this here time machine which’ll take us back 215 years and 51 weeks, to February 1809.
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln is born in a log cabin in Kentucky, to poor parents. At the age of 7, his parents move to Indiana. He teaches himself and by the age of 25 is studying law in Illinois. Three years later – this is 1837 – he’s admitted to the Illinois Bar. Nearly a decade later he joins the House of Representatives, where he starts campaigning against slavery.
He starts gaining notoriety in his race for the Senate, and is elected President at the age of 51, going on to serve a second term, during which time he Issues the Emancipation Proclamation which frees Confederate slaves, and delivers the Gettysburg Address, which is the famous “four score and seven years ago” speech.
He oversees the surrender of Robert E Lee, and only five days later is assassinated by John Wilkes Booth. He dies the next morning, and in the December of that year, 1865, the 13th Amendment to the Constitution is passed, abolishing slavery throughout the entire United States.
Throughout his life, Lincoln suffered the kind of clinical depression that would nowadays have been a massive stick for the opposition to beat him with. It made him withdraw from people, and gave him suicidal ideation.
With Lincoln we have a man whose depression spurred him, painfully, to examine the core of his soul; whose hard work to stay alive helped him develop crucial skills and capacities, even as his depression lingered hauntingly; and whose inimitable character took great strength from the piercing insights of depression, the creative responses to it, and a spirit of humble determination forged over decades of deep suffering and earnest longing.
This comes from a fascinating article on the subject of Lincoln’s depression. It brings up some pretty impactful images, of the man slumped in a chair, his gangly arms flopping over his knees, with that downwards and downcast expression you’ve probably seen in the poster for his 2012 biopic.
It got worse following the death of his friend and possible romantic partner Ann Rutledge, and it was serious enough that it would, by today’s standards, be called clinical depression.
But that’s all just background, not only to the man’s achievements, but to the way he approached work. We’ll hop aboard that train of thought a little later, but for now let’s travel forwards a mere 9 years from Lincoln’s death, to Oxfordshire.
Winston Churchill
Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill is born into the wealthy Spencer family, who you may recognise from other such aristocrats as Diana, Princess of Wales. He’s elected as a Conservative MP around the turn of the century, and then defects to the liberals four years later.
He rises in status while championing prison reform and social security, but after a disastrous campaign in World War I, is demoted from Firsd Lord of the Admiralty to Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Pfft.
Between 1929 and 1939, things get a bit blurry but in May 1940 he’s promoted back to First Lord of the Admiralty, succeeds Neville Chamberlain and forms a Conservative government.
Then there’s a bunch of war stuff… honestly someone should really make a film about the Second World War as there just doesn’t seem to be enough. Anyway, the Tories are voted out in 1945 and he ends up on the other set of green benches as leader of the opposition.
If you know anything about Churchill, you probably know at least some of his quotations. “We will fight them on the beaches”, “My dear you are ugly, but tomorrow I shall be sober and you will still be ugly”, and my current personal favourite “Never stand up when you can sit down, and never sit down when you can lie down”.
Back in the early 2000s, every geeky parody song released on the interwebs was attributed to Weird Al Yankovic, which left him holding the bag for some pretty unsavoury stuff. Famous quotes are like that; sometimes it just feels like it fits better to say that Churchill or Twain or whoever said a particular thing, especially if we can throw it up on Instagram with a sunset picture behind it.
But Churchill was doubtless a witty man, and a grumpy man. Now, some would argue that Churchill could never have achieved what he did if he had bipolar disorder. And I’m not about to refute the word of experts, but people are outliers for a reason.
Churchill painted, and Lincoln wrote poetry. Being creative isn’t an indicator of mental illness, but people with mental illness often find creative outlets. Now, I promised we’d get into some actual, practical stuff, and we’re just about to do that, but I want to make the point that whether you think a certain way of feeling needs validating by a textbook or not, these two men had great work to do and were in their second innings in life.
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Morning routines
For Lincoln, the day started at around 7 in the morning. He’d be up and working before breakfast, and might nip out to grab a newspaper. He often forgot to eat, and his wife would sometimes invite people round for breakfast just so he’d get some food in him.
Once again if you know anything about Churchill, you probably know that, much like myself, Winston wasn’t big on skipping meals. He’d wake at the same time, take his breakfast in bed while reading the paper, and delegating work to his secretaries. Lunch was a multi-course affair for Winston, after which he’d retire to his study before taking a nap at 5.
Tactical napping
This has been described as Churchill’s “secret weapon”: He believed that a 90-minute nap allowed him to do 36 hours’ work in 24. Research suggests that shorter naps are good for alertness, but longer naps are where it’s at if you want to improve your memory, because that’s when your brain turns short-term memories into long ones, like moving stuff from your Downloads folder into your Documents. If we don’t get enough of that kind of restorative sleep, our brains take those downloads and whack them straight in the recycle bin.
Sleep didn’t come nearly as well to Lincoln. Poor Abe would be up at nights, sometimes pacing around the White House, or just lying there in bed, not getting any shut-eye. He’d try and get to bed between 10 and 11 so he could get his 8 hours in, but it’s not something he mastered.
Preparation
What Lincoln did master, however, was preparation. The quote about the tree and the axe, y’know ,”If I had four hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend the first two hours sharpening the axe”, well, there’s no evidence he actually said that, and the first we know of it comes from 1944. But that’s never stopped “thought leaders” liberally using it and attributing it back to Abe.
That particular quote aside, preparation was crucial to the way Lincoln communicated.
Lincoln had this rolltop desk, and he would scratch thoughts out for speeches and then put them in this desk. When the time came for the speech, he’d just pick these little thoughts out. Somehow he managed to get the Gettysburg Address from those scraps.
Thank you, Doris Kearns Goodwin.
Concision
Since we’re in the mode of uncovering quotes, there’s that lovely one about having written a longer letter because there wasn’t enough time to write a short one. It’s another quote that’s got mangled and mucked about with over the years, but it’s as true as any truism that truly was true.
I’m currently into hour four of writing what’ll probably end up being about a 12-minute monologue, and that’s before I get in the shed and bang on at you for another 8 minutes unscripted. Incidentally, if you want more behind-the-scenes stuff like that, the Undo Book Club is where to go.
The point is that concision takes time, and that’s what Lincoln was good at. It’s also what Churchill prized.
According to productivity coach Dan Silvestre, Churchill insisted memos were limited to one type-written page, so information could be digested and understood as quickly as possible, even if it took longer to write.
Churchill might have been lazy in the sense that he only did the work that was absolutely necessary, and did so as restfully as possible, but he was not workshy. Not only did he write more words than Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare combined, he also received a Nobel Prize in literature in 1953. How do you achieve so much? By only doing the necessary, and putting your energy where it’s most effective.
When his mind was occupied with any particular problem, it was relentlessly focused upon it and would not be turned aside.
Those are the words of Sir Ian Jacob, who was the Military Assistant Secretary in Churchill’s war cabinet, and who’d go on to become Director General of the BBC.
And of course, we see the same determination in Lincoln, with his singular focus on abolishing slavery. We also see empathy in Lincoln, and while he had his “melancholy” as he called it, he was regarded, by today’s standards, as a standup guy. He kept an open door policy, spending more time outside of the White House during his presidency than within its walls, filling his days with meetings which, for him, were his best source of information.
It’s about people
I get the sense he was genuinely interested in people, but not from a scientific, “how do they tick” perspective, but something more akin to a philanthropist. The more books you read on self-help or self-improvement, the more you read about the importance of relationships, and this was a key part in Lincoln’s life.
Of course he’s just about the most revered man in American history so naturally biographical snippets are always going to paint him as a hero. But putting aside, for a moment, the question of whether he was “nice”, the point we need to care about here is that he cared about people. He got stuff done through a mixture of good nature and fierce integrity, and this is relevant to us because productivity is so much more than rigid systems and frameworks; it’s about working with others, setting priorities, and keeping commitments.
If we were to characterise Lincoln as a people person, I don’t think the same label would apply to Churchill. While he was witty and charismatic, I don’t think one would describe him as being warm, and the story of this wartime PM is that of defiant leader rather then collaborator. Churchill was flawed in many respects and made big mistakes during his political and military careers, and it’s been said that he was a great wartime PM, but not as effective in times of peace.
And this, for me, is where these two men part company. I envy Winston’s quick wit and his efficient brain, but in an interconnected world, it takes more than brilliance to be successful. I love systems, but I also love people. Like Churchill I get irritated when those squishy meat sacks don’t work the way they’re supposed to, but if I’m going to save time by implementing the systems I’m exploring here, I’d much rather be like Lincoln, keep an open door and work with people so both of us win.
If we swing back around to depression or low mood, I’m left thinking about how we channel those feelings. The word “depression” has the same root as the word “deep”, and for me it speaks to a depth of feeling, which both men had in spades. If you feel deeply, you can push that feeling inwards, into yourself, or you can push it outwards, into the world.
Both Lincoln and Churchill took their darker energies, and I think were animated by them. Gloom can turn to grit once you have a good handle on your purpose, the thing you decide you’re really for. That word, purpose, has been overused a bit over the last few years, but it’s something we’re going to come back to because it’s actually really important – it’s all well being productive, but unless you know what it’s in service of, you’re just grinding your gears.
Get back up
When you fall over, you need a moment to grab your knee and go “ahhhhhh”, then you get the hell back up again and keep on moving. If you’re not ready to do that just yet, no worries, I’ll sit here with you. But when you are ready to go on, I think these 3 things can help.
Get 8 hours of sleep, or take a 90-minute nap when you can. Believe me, I know it’s harder than it sounds, but it’s all really just a part of my second point, which is preparation.
Preparation really is everything. Any self-respecting tea drinker knows you don’t just show the tea bag to a cup of water – that’s how you make hot water, not tea. You’ve got to let it steep. If you want to make a really good chilli rather than a slightly spicy bolognese, time is the key ingredient… and not the herb, you get it.
And lastly, what is this all in service of, if not for other people? Do you want your best relationships to be formed when you’re retired and you finally have enough time for people? If you’re making art and you want it to resonate with people, is the story of the solitary painter or the isolated writer actually one we can use, or might it just make our work more insular and disconnected from those around us? And if the early 21st century is teaching us anything, it’s teaching us that we need to be seeing eye-to-eye more, not shutting ourselves away.
I know it’s tough right now, but while saving time is mostly about implementing good systems – and we’ll get back to those next week – the thing we should be making time for is human connection, no matter how bonkers other humans might seem right now.
So, go out into the world; my friend, do great things, and hold your head up high. In the words of Mr Churchill himself, “If you are going through hell, keep going”.
