The Addictive Idea of “Grinding”

There is this idea, often sold to young men, that “you just need to choose to be successful,” that success is only a function of how much suffering you can put yourself through. The reason this is addictive is that it lowers the perceived bar to peoples dream life.

The problem is this only works if, on a fundamental level, you truly believe it. You believe that your success is unbounded. The problem is, if you consume this sort of “motivational” content, you fundamentally do not accept this as true. You are trying to convince yourself of it.

You have to understand that the source of this belief has to be well founded. Most of the people who seek this type of story, need to reflect on what there true self image is. If you, even unconsciously, think you are a loser, no amount of consuming this hyperbolic “grindset” content will help you.

The Solution: Tear it all Down

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate."

– Carl Jung

To be clear, I am not Jungian. But I think accuracy is secondary to usefulness.

First thing is, reflect. Think about your actions in the third person. When you feel emotional think “I am getting angry/sad/aggressive.” Every action should fall in line with who you are, try to cut out every action, everything, in your life that is not in your vision of yourself. Or, revise your vision of yourself.

Don’t get rid of emotion. Control it. Emotion is the primary language of communication between people. Feelings, intuition, predicate everything we do. How we feel about something, how we feel about ourselves, is what motivates us. This is not as insightful as you think, you know it, but it feels better to believe that our actions are “rational” (whatever that even means).

Look within and reject any attachment to useless outside influence on your core values.

The Solution: Building Back Up (Escaping Troughs and Rock Bottom)

This is the hardest paradigm shift to make. Realize that people do not do crazy things out of a singular conjuring of pure will. Pulling unnecessary all nighters, that motivation you get at 3 AM, is unsustainable and you are falling behind.

Growth is incremental, and there are infinite aphorisms I can provide to frame this: kaizen (my favorite), the tortoise vs the hare, run a marathon not a sprint, linear vs exponential growth, 1% a day for a year vs doubling in a day, etc. This is the easy part to get.

Now the hard part: actually practicing and believing this. The single best thing I ever did was starting with taking care of myself. First thing I actually had to do was to reflect, realize that cumulatively I was unsuccessful. The first thing I noticed when I started meditating was that I was actually super tired, only awake due to the constant stimulation of the outside world. I was being controlled, my mind was malleable. I was being conditioned to be the ultimate consumer, to be an addict. I hate being unfree, so this already gave me motivation.

There are a billion things I could say or provide, to make you take care of yourself better, but realize that the first low effort things that anyone can do that will incrementally improve themselves is self-care.

The Current Self-Help Culture is Harmful

Everything I just said is commonly accepted advice, and it is not wrong. However, I refuse to let this be an excuse to be lazy. If you take care of yourself and are living a linear life, in other words you stopped at taking care of yourself and your rate of growth plateaued, that is worse than the people who start at the bottom. As the people who started at the bottom accelerate to your velocity, as quickly as they caught up, they will pass you.

We have been conditioned to comfort. Conditioned to mediocrity. Sometimes all nighters are necessary. Sometimes things must get done. Do those things. All I am saying is, think about when these are necessary (locking in right before a checkpoint in a video game), and when you are getting outpaced (the tortoise will pass you once you go to sleep). If you like something and do not love it, change it. I am incapable of doing things halfway. I am incapable of clocking in and clocking out of work. Why would I chose to do something I do not enjoy? If I choose to do it, I enjoy it, If I enjoy it, I will pursue it relentlessly.

This is the difference between an employee at a FAANG and a startup. It has to do with culture and mindset. If you primarily draw meaning from things outside of work, it makes sense that work is a means to an end. If you are young (no one to provide for), ambitious, and have a strong vision, do what you love. If at the first hard problem you encounter your first thought is “I am not doing this because it is not in my job descriptions and has a lot of unknowns” work at a big company, where the company cares much less about you and the value you create for it. You can easily reframe this as “this is a hard problem and how can I facilitate a solution that provides value for my company and myself?” or even “is solving this hard problem worth it in terms of contributing to the vision of the company?” Much more useful, and frankly easier to get to, framing for startups, where you are deeply connected to the vision.

Talk Which Inspired this: How to Win by Daniel Gross (highly recommend)