I wasn’t sure if he wanted a pat on the back or a pity party.
A friend of mine recently landed a big-time tech job in Silicon Valley, a gig that most ambitious 20-somethings would drool over. But no less than a week after starting, he took to Instagram to announce that he’d been working past midnight every day.
Ah yes, the classic dark/empty office picture with “1:28 AM” stamped over it to subtly remind the peasants that they don’t #grind as hard as you. As if it’s a badge of honor to squander your waking hours so the boss can kick back in his Ferrari.
But wait, you say, the grind never stops – Gary Vee told me so.
Actually, the grind should stop. Every day.
The idea that chipping away at your free time can boost productivity is just that: an idea. There’s a brick wall waiting for your brain after you cross the 9-hour threshold of deep work. Your eyes drift. Your writing becomes sloppy and passive. You make mistakes that most 4th graders wouldn’t.
But the try-hards on #TeamNoSleep don’t care. For them, quantity is more impressive than quality. Work turns into a competition: Oh you worked until 9 last night? Well I’ve been up since 4 a.m. and haven’t even eaten today.
I don’t know how or why it happened, but we created work porn—and we’re obsessed with it. We broadcast and gawk over the superficialities of work instead of appreciating its value. We think a 60-hour work week at 70% effort is sexier than 35 hours at 100%. We glorify the all-nighter, the hustler who cranks out the project after slamming six Red Bulls at 4 a.m. We don’t hear about the guy who completed the same project over the span of a month, even though he didn’t look like a zombie the morning of the presentation.
Trading free time for more work has nothing to do with passion or work ethic. If anything, it’s a mask for insecurity. If you’re skeptical, take it from Ryan Holiday, one of the world’s most successful young writers:
“If you’re working all the time—that is, if you don’t get to leave the office until midnight and got there at 5 a.m.—you’re doing something wrong. You’re either working for an idiot who is going to burn you out, or you’re the idiot and you haven’t figured out the short cuts.”
That, or you just like to play martyr.
And if you cheer the workaholics on, you’re part of the problem.
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