The Truth About Hustle Culture
“Focus on your grind and put in the work!”
“Focus on your grind and put in the work!”
sounds wise and motivational coming from the mouths of people like Elon Musk, Will Smith, Arnold Schwarzenegger or Gary Vaynerchuck.
#Hardworkpaysoff
looks great on inspirational Instagram memes.
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But here’s the problem with the modern hustle culture: It’s misleading.
One might think you only have to work hard and you’ll be guaranteed to succeed at some point. And when you see all the rich and super successful people from the business and media world telling you the same thing — it makes intuitive sense.
But it’s not true.
For every Gary Vaynerchuck who works 14 hours a day and winning big time, there are thousands of people struggling to just get by and put food on the table while working 16 hours a day — just because they are in very different environments.
And for every Elon Musk, there are probably 10x as many people putting in the same amount of insane work — simply working on the wrong things and getting nowhere.
You just don’t hear from these people.*
The point is not that hard work is not valuable.
The point is that hard work is only one piece of the puzzle.
Hard work is necessary. But it’s not sufficient.
Put another way:
if you don’t put in the work, you’ll likely fail (at almost everything).
But putting in the work doesn’t guarantee success (at almost anything).
The sobering truth is this:
You can work really hard on the wrong things.
You can work really hard on the right things but in a dumb way.
You can work really hard on the right things in a smart way at the wrong time.
You can work really hard on the right things in a smart way at the right time in the wrong environment.
You get the idea.
Hard work is fuel. But where you’ll get with it depends a lot on creativity, strategy, timing, connections, circumstance and… luck.
Having a hardcore work ethic is great.
But so is:
resting when its needed,
quitting when it makes sense,
allowing yourself to be creative,
creating room for inspiration,
zooming out to strategize,
connecting with the right people,
trying out different things,
improving your self-awareness and -honesty.
Nuance matters (as always).
And don’t forget:
Life is not the sum of goals you achieve. Life is the process of trying to achieve goals. Make sure it matters.
*This is closely tied to Survivorship Bias — one of the most important phenomena to understand regarding decision making and understanding cause and effect.
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