Grinding All My Life
These days, every con artist has their own podcast or social media page, with themes that are moderately varied but similar at their core: If a person grinds every day, works out, and works hard, they’ll become successful. Hard work is certainly admirable, and should be rewarded with success. However, every hard worker must also understand that life must exist in balance and nobody is strong enough to be on the grind constantly. At a certain point, if you’re running on maximum overdrive for long enough, you’ll eventually run yourself into the ground.
But a true hustler doesn’t succumb to discomfort, they keep grinding. Success is a mentality, apparently, not a product of opportunity, talent, or wealth. The hustler’s mindset is this era’s latest scam and content creators are the salesmen.
We, of course, feel the pressure of the dog-eat-dog world around us, growing competitive in our workspace as well as with our acquired resources. “The hustle-culture narrative promotes the idea that there's always more to strive for,” says Megan Carnegie, a journalist from BBC. “More money to make, a bigger title or promotion to secure and a higher ceiling to smash.” The hustle mentality has taken root in our modern society. It lectures the masses about lacking work ethic if you’re not fostering a side-hustle and aren’t continually striving for the next level of wealth. So despite the innate human need to rest and recover every now and then, both physically and mentally, the achievement-driven mindset has doomed entire generations to feel less-than just because they don’t want to work 24/7.
According to WellRight, an online mental health resource, “Hustle culture often leads to a cycle of relentlessly pursuing professional achievements at the cost of personal wellbeing.” There is a fine line between hard work and toxic productivity that often goes amiss. As WellRight reports, 80% of employees are likely to experience professional burnout, which will thrust society into a crisis of financial pressure and work-related stress. However, the social media personas who have built their entire online business around the “grindset” promise a direct reward from the relentless pursuit of professional endeavors. However, they don’t realize the cost of crossing the line.
Thrilled by the simplicity of this play on words, the manosphere coined the mashup slang word “grindset” in the late 2010s to describe the sigma male, lone-wolf archetype that success-seeking audiences were encouraged to emulate. The grind mindset culture took off under the guise of a motivational tool, yet it was largely perpetuated by guilt, shame, and belittlement of others. If you aren’t grinding every day, wallowing in discomfort, and pursuing impossible goals, you clearly didn’t want to be successful, and therefore, didn’t deserve the comforts or rewards of success.
Some of us look forward to leisure, hobbies, and frivolous pleasures, but to the hustlers, that’s a waste of life. Although, apparently, the “grindset” influencers never thought that creating low-quality graphics of a well-dressed businessman or a super-swole, borderline-neanderthalic gym bro alongside a Tumblr-style quote could also be considered a waste of time…
Via u/beast_thinks
… But for the grifters, this opens up an opportunity to get close to a new, malleable market of consumers: The motivationally destitute.
Money Reeks of Desperation
Humans seek motivation when they’re feeling down or desperate. With their backs against the wall and odds pitted against them, it’s nice to feel like you have someone in your corner offering guidance and pointing you in the right direction. This sentiment is exactly the feeling that online grindset grifters chase. Manipulating their followership into a peer-pressured, unrealistic work mentality, they effectively motivate their audiences to lean into the snake oil that they’re selling.
Whether they’re linking out a $25 AI-written self-help book, a 12-step program towards success, mental brain-activity vitamin supplements, hourly rates to host CEO-coded work summits, or the subscribe button to their mid-level podcast, grind culture has become insanely profitable. According to John LaRossa, a business reporter at Marketresearch.com, the value of the professional, motivational speaking industry will reach $2.30 billion by the end of 2025. And that’s just in the U.S. alone.
Via u/webbdesignz
After years of pushing the narrative of the self-made successful sigma male and the overworked entrepreneurial deity, the grift has come full circle. As the advisors proclaim their successful business models, they’re simultaneously selling the tools and tips on becoming a success. Like an overinflated ponzi scheme, self-acclaimed “successful businessmen” sell their advice to the masses before ever having achieved success.
The motto, “fake it till you make it,” reflects a mindset of projecting confidence until one achieves competence, and in this case, it’s never been so literal.
Luckily, the mindset of the younger generation’s workforce seems to be shifting. According to Megan Calgerie at BBC, “Long hours working might have once been the ultimate status symbol, but some people appear to be prioritizing health and family over the hustle.” Inside you, there are two lions. One is the self-proclaimed king of the jungle, a sigma male constantly fighting other lions, vying for territory, and combing his mane 24/7. The other is relaxed, destined to chill out by the watering hole, roam the beautiful savannahs, and do whatever suits him on his days off from lion duties. One lion woke up and decided to be the king of his present and the other chose to attempt to become the king of his future.
It’s up to us to decide which one we believe is winning in life.
As the landscape of work-life balance shifts, so does our perspective on how we spend our lives and our time. And for those of us who look forward to the day we can throw away our timecards, say goodbye to our managers, and retire in peace, clocking out for good is the ultimate sign of success. Burning out and running yourself into the ground is more of a failure than accepting your limitations, making time for the things you love, and refusing to line the pockets of grifters by buying into the delusion of the toxic grindset.
