My flight from Berlin to Munich was delayed by an hour. Like most people in the lounge, I just found a seat and waited.
I opened the October issue of manager magazin. The cover story, “Das große Rauswerfen,” or “the great firing,” says tens of thousands of German executives are losing their jobs right now. [1]
The numbers back this up. In 2025, Germany had an average of 49,000 unemployed managers, up 14% from the previous year and the highest since 2015. [2] Three days after my flight, BMW announced it would cut its divisions and related management jobs by a fifth by mid-2027. [3] These figures are for Germany; I haven’t checked if it’s the same elsewhere.
As I read the article, many of these managers spent years coordinating other people’s work. They collected reports, passed on updates, and set agendas. Their companies asked them to do exactly that and paid them well for it. Now those layers are being removed. I don’t know why any one of them individually lost a job, and I won’t guess.
The article made me reflect. I looked around at people having coffee and snacks and found myself wondering: What am I doing to protect myself from a professional setback?
I was asking myself this in a lounge, a place designed so we don’t have to stand while waiting at the gate.
My kids make things all day
The honest answer might be: over the years, I’ve lost the skill of making things.
I watch my kids do it all day. They make things up. They try something, it fails, and they try again. They aren’t ashamed of any of it. They keep going until they can do it.
As we grow up, we start shaping how we see ourselves and how we want others to see us. After that, we focus on adding details and perfecting that image.
A corporate career works the same way. You learn what the job requires, and you get better and better at being a corporate leader. I’ve watched myself do it. It takes skill. It’s also something entirely different from sitting down and creating.
Getting promoted changes what you do. Now you use skills like making decisions, judging people, and handling conflict every day. Other skills quietly disappear from your routine. Someone else builds the first version or runs the first analysis.
By Friday, you can feel exhausted without having made anything yourself.
Last Sunday, I wrote about friends who are counting down their remaining working years. During that hour in the lounge, I asked myself a more specific question: What can the people around me still make themselves?
I believe that if you stop using a skill, it fades. I also think my approach to this has been wrong. Let me explain both points.
Use it or lose it
In 2025, 4 economists published the best data I found on this. [4]
A representative sample of German adults aged 16 to 65 took a reading test and a math test. About 3.5 years later, 3,263 of them took the tests again. On average, skills kept improving well into midlife. Reading peaked at age 46 and math at 41. That’s good news if you’re 45 and feel slower than before.
The researchers also asked how often people used these skills at work and at home. For math, this included things like calculating budgets, making charts and tables, and using formulas. For reading, it meant reading manuals, articles, emails, and memos. Then they divided the group in half.
For those who used their skills more often, there was no average decline at any age. For those who used them less, skills started to decline in their mid-30s.
The study only measured reading and math. It doesn’t directly address creativity, judgment, or leadership. The authors say their data show a pattern but can’t prove that using a skill protects it. Another possibility is that people with stronger skills end up in jobs where they use them more.
The study also doesn’t show that getting promoted causes any decline. Senior roles involve plenty of emails, memos, and articles, so many executives likely fall into the high-use group for reading. My observation is that tasks like making budgets and charts are often the first things you hand off after a promotion.
The doctor’s take: In my view, a senior job often takes away the chance to use certain skills. In my Upward ARC framework, this is the Capacity pillar: what you can still do, kept alive by actually doing it.
The hardship we buy
I have a theory about where our effort goes. When our jobs stop requiring us to make things, we look for challenges elsewhere.
The drive to the Baltic is one of the few times our kids get their screens. On Friday, all 3 were in the back with their shows. That gave Erna and me some peace, so we put on a podcast: Joe Rogan talking to the neuroscientist Andrew Huberman. [5]
At one point Huberman says, “If I just keep doing really hard things, I’m going to stay in control of my impulses.” Meanwhile, my three kids in the back seat were doing the opposite, and I let it happen.
I’m one of the people he’s talking to. I like pushing through things nobody asked me to do, and some of them are stupid. I could shower warm. I stand under the cold water for a minute anyway, and it does something to my mind. I do the same in the sauna. I stay when it gets uncomfortably hot.
I’m not alone in this. Michael Easter wrote a popular book called The Comfort Crisis, where he talks about the misogi. He learned it from Marcus Elliott, a Harvard-trained sports scientist. Once a year, Elliott chooses a challenge with two rules: it must be so hard you have a real 50% chance of finishing, and you can’t die. [6]
Jesse Itzler hired the Navy SEAL David Goggins to move in with him for a month and wrote a book about it. [7] Backyard ultra runners circle a 6.7-kilometer loop every hour until only one is left. The record is 119 loops, nearly 800 kilometers in close to 5 days. [8]
There is research about effort and value. In a 2011 experiment, researchers asked 52 students to bid on a plain IKEA storage box. Some had just built it themselves, while others got the same box already assembled. The builders bid $0.78 on average; the others bid $0.48. [9] This effect only appeared when people finished the job. If they built it and then took it apart, the effect disappeared. [9]
The doctor’s take: This is where I’ve been mistaken. A cold shower makes me feel like I’ve done something hard, but it doesn’t create anything. In the experiment, the extra value went to the box people built. The study didn’t test if this effect carries over to other things. I doubt it does, and I haven’t found any evidence that a cold shower or a misogi keeps your work skills sharp. Do hard things because you enjoy them.
Whether hard things train your control over your impulses is a separate question. I leave it open here.
The seat at the edge of the ring
Later in the same episode, Huberman tells a story from a boxing gym in San Diego where he used to spar on Wednesday nights. One man there looked sharp on the bags. He sat at the edge of the ring and gave everyone advice. Huberman kept inviting him in for a couple of rounds, and the man always had a reason to say no. In the end, the gym’s owner told him the man had probably not boxed a round since he was a kid. [5]
It’s easy to end up in that position. I’m talking about myself here. What got me out of it was writing. When I started posting on LinkedIn, my posts got 5 likes. That includes the colleagues who clicked to show support.
I lead an office, so when I speak, people listen. My role, my reputation, and a familiar audience all help with that. I don’t know how much my confidence relies on these factors, so I wanted to test it.
Online, none of that carries over. No one has to listen; it’s their choice. It’s uncomfortable every time. I put my ego aside, publish, and do it again the next week.
Writing taught me to go back and do things myself. That’s what I mean by creating. It’s the doing. It’s learning by building something on your own. Watching tutorials and collecting a certificate doesn’t count.
Since then I’ve been building. Here are 4 examples out of many. A task manager for people with ADHD. A workout planner for people who travel, which adjusts to the equipment in a hotel gym. My own app store. And a website for my writing, which I set up so that AI assistants can find and quote it. People call that GEO or AEO. It seems to be working. This week, someone told me he asked Gemini who to interview as an expert on a topic, and it suggested my name!
Building things has brought back the joy of creating. I lost that feeling over the years, but now I’m getting it back.
I chose to start over from the bottom. The people in that magazine article didn’t have that choice.
The doctor’s take: I don’t know of any study showing that returning to creating prepares you for job loss or protects you from restructuring. The German study is about keeping skills, which is a different issue. My view is that creating changes what you have in your hands the day after. That’s why I do it.
One more thought, and I’m leaving this open on purpose. A promotion lets you hand your tasks to others. AI lets us hand off even more of the thinking and doing, which probably makes us faster. I use it myself, even for things I build. What I can’t say is what happens over time if we become dependent on AI, or on the satisfaction of making something yourself. I don’t have an answer yet.
Try this today
What works is often small, and that’s what makes it tough. Doing a task you handed off years ago means you’ll be slower than the person who does it now. It also means asking someone junior to point out what’s wrong with your work. A cold shower costs me a minute of discomfort; this costs me some pride.
Take a moment to reflect. Write down three things you made yourself ten years ago but don’t make anymore. Circle the one you’d like to bring back. Or something new that’s not in your job description but forces you out of your comfort zone.
Create a first version yourself. Choose a small, useful task you’d usually delegate this week. It could be the first page of a memo or the first draft of a chart. Do it yourself from start to finish, without giving a briefing. Then ask someone who does this work daily for specific feedback.
Try a small misogi at work. Use Elliott’s first rule, but make it smaller. Choose a task where you’re unsure if you can still do it well, and where failure would only be embarrassing, not costly. Do it yourself, where others can see the result. His second rule still stands.
What my kids already know
Our oldest, Tilda, is 12 and wants to be a lawyer to help people. I admire her sense of right and wrong, and I hope she gets to follow that path.
Whatever Tilda, Magnus, and Karla choose to do, I want them to keep what they have now. They make things without worrying if they’re good at it yet. I hope they’ll always be willing to start over, even if it’s embarrassing.
That’s not something I can teach from a lounge chair.
What did you stop making yourself, and do you want it back? Reply and let me know. I read every message.
Stay healthy.
Andre
PS: If you know someone who is taking stock of their own work right now, forward this to them. That’s how this newsletter grows, and it’s the only way I want it to.
PPS: If a friend sent you this, you can get Under Load, my Sunday edition, here: andreheeg.com
References
[1] manager magazin. (2026, October). Das große Rauswerfen [Cover story]. manager magazin, (10/2026).
[2] Handelsblatt. (2026, January 14). Führungskräfte: Arbeitslosigkeit unter Managern erreicht Rekordniveau. Handelsblatt. https://www.handelsblatt.com/karriere/fuehrungskraefte-arbeitslosigkeit-unter-managern-erreicht-rekordniveau/100189439.html
[3] Deutsche Presse-Agentur. (2026, September 30). Bis Mitte 2027: BMW schrumpft Topmanagement um ein Fünftel. Autohaus. https://autohaus.de/nachrichten/autohersteller/bis-mitte-2027-bmw-schrumpft-topmanagement-um-ein-fuenftel-3911004
[4] Hanushek, E. A., Kinne, L., Witthöft, F., & Woessmann, L. (2025). Age and cognitive skills: Use it or lose it. Science Advances, 11(10), eads1560. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.ads1560
[5] Rogan, J. (Host). (2026, September 14). Andrew Huberman (No. 2553) [Audio podcast episode]. In The Joe Rogan Experience.
[6] Roberts, R. (Host). (2021, July 19). Michael Easter on the comfort crisis [Audio podcast episode]. In EconTalk. Library of Economics and Liberty. https://www.econtalk.org/michael-easter-on-the-comfort-crisis/
[7] Itzler, J. (2015). Living with a SEAL: 31 days training with the toughest man on the planet. Center Street.
[8] Runner’s Tribe. (2025, June 26). Phil Gore breaks backyard ultra world record with 119 loops. https://runnerstribe.com/latest-news/phil-gore-breaks-backyard-ultra-world-record-with-119-loops/
[9] Norton, M. I., Mochon, D., & Ariely, D. (2011). The “IKEA effect”: When labor leads to love (Working Paper No. 11-091). Harvard Business School.