The grind bros got you.
You probably went through a phase, maybe you're still in it, where you genuinely believed the path was just suffering more than everyone else.
Wake up earlier, sleep less, skip the hangout, say no to everything that feels good. And the more miserable you are, the more you must be doing it right.
That's the logic. That's what got sold to you through a 90 second video with dramatic music in the background.
But look at the people who actually built something. Not the guys posting about building something, the ones who actually did.
Most of them weren't discipline-maxxing their way through life. A lot of them looked kind of lazy from the outside. They took long lunches. They had hobbies that had nothing to do with their work. They'd go down random rabbit holes for weeks on something that seemed totally useless.
Alysa Liu just won the Olympics and if you watch any of her interviews the thing that stands out is she actually loves skating. Not in a "I'm grateful for this opportunity" PR way, she genuinely has fun on the ice, she's goofy about it, she talks about it like a kid who just really likes doing the thing.
That's not incidental to her winning. That's probably a big reason why.
Tesla walked like 8-10 miles a day not as some productivity hack, just because he genuinely liked walking and it's where his brain did its thing. The ideas didn't come from locking in harder. They came from a brain that was relaxed enough to actually make connections.
This isn't me saying don't work hard. Work hard. Put in the hours.
But there's a difference between being locked in on something you actually give a damn about versus performing suffering because you think that's what serious people look like.
One of those actually produces something. The other one just makes you miserable and gives you content.
And the worst part of the whole grind culture thing is what it does to your relationship with your own goals.
When everything is sacrifice, when fun is the enemy, you start to resent the thing you're building. You start to resent the work.
And then one day you hit the goal, or some version of it, and it doesn't even feel how you thought it would. You spend two years grinding toward something, you get there, and it feels like taking off shoes that were slightly too tight.
Like, relief, yeah, but then that fades in like a week and you're back to being you. Same brain. Same problems. Just with a different number in your bank account or a different title or whatever the thing was.
So if the process is miserable, and the destination doesn't even fix anything, what exactly is the plan here?
This is the part where most people just pivot to grinding toward the next thing. New goal, same misery, same anticlimax when they get there.
Rinse and repeat until you're 45 wondering why you're not happy despite doing everything right.
The alternative is actually pretty simple even if it sounds soft at first.
Start treating the process like the whole point, because it is.
If you're building something, find the parts of it that are genuinely interesting to you and pull on those. Let yourself go down the weird rabbit holes. Have the conversations that seem off topic. Think in the shower. Go for the walk.
Be a little like a kid about it, kids are obsessed with things not because someone told them to be, they're obsessed because they actually find it interesting and they're not embarrassed about that yet.
The best work almost always comes from people who are genuinely having fun with the problem.
Not fun like laughing the whole time, but fun like they're curious, they want to see what happens, they can't really stop thinking about it.
That's a completely different energy than forcing yourself through something because some guy told you that discipline is the differentiator.
And yeah, be honest with yourself about why you're doing what you're doing.
If the real answer is for the post, for the validation, for the people who doubted you, that's fine to admit, but just know that stuff runs out fast. External motivation has like a two week shelf life.
At some point you need to actually find the thing interesting or it becomes a prison you built for yourself.
Fun-maxx a little. Seriously.
Not instead of working, alongside it.
The grind is not the virtue. The work is the virtue.
And work done by someone who's genuinely into it will lap work done by someone white-knuckling through every single day, every single time.
The decision is yours
Confusing, jargon-packed, and time-consuming. Or quick, direct, and actually enjoyable.
Easy choice.
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See you on the next stair,
Alastair