Hustle Porn — The addiction to overworking (from my TEDx)

(link to the TEDx if you want to watch instead: https://youtu.be/2gN7z5BHEjE)

So we’ve all seen hustle porn. I’m not alone here right? Each and every one of you listening to this talk right now has seen hustle porn. The ambitious among us even enjoyed a little hustle porn, until the long hours turned to burnout and dread. I don’t judge. I’m not here to make you feel guilty for listening to hustle porn, quite the opposite in fact, I’m here to make you aware of hustle porn, and give you some better alternatives.

You’re likely wondering what hustle porn is? And no, it’s not what you’re thinking. Hustle Porn is the fetishization of no work/life balance, bad entrepreneurial teachings and entrepreneurs overworking themselves to the point of depression. Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian first coined the term, explaining how it’s a plague affecting all entrepreneurs. I think this affects a lot more than just entrepreneurs even though they are the main demographic, I think this affects every one of us trying to build anything for the future. Any of us working towards a goal, whether you’re an artist, entrepreneur or author you’ve likely seen and been influenced by hustle porn throughout the recent years. In our society we all want to succeed so badly, that now it’s an achievement to work 80 hours a week, regardless if that is actually effective in the long run and whether it really helps us achieve.

For those of you who are still unsure about what hustle porn is, let’s take a look at some examples you might come across:

Here’s an Instagram post of a sports car accompanied by words such as “be so busy you dont have time to be sad”.

Or this pink image that says “Don’t stop when you’re tired, stop when you’re done”.

Or my favourite, this is the staple of hustle porn, you already know its gonna be good when it shows a wolf of wall street scene in the background, “This is why you’re poor, are you willing to work 100 hour weeks? Are you willing to not go on vacation for 3 years? Would you celebrate Christmas in January because of business? I HAVE”, I mean I guess that’s what it takes, if its on Instagram it must be true.

The last example highlights hustle porn perfectly. It aims to motivate and get you riled up behind losing all work/life balance, and wants you to realise that in order to achieve your aims, you must be prepared to sacrifice everything.

Why am I the one to talk about this? When I first came to England in 2010 knowing no English to graduating high school 6 years later with the highest English Language score in my school, I learnt first-hand where hard-work and dedication can take me, not only academically but in life also. Having learnt that ambition from a fairly young age, I have applied that same drive throughout my life, being able to mature much faster and reach milestones at a much younger age. Currently, as a 21-year-old founder who at a point during the pandemic, worked as a software engineer, studied at university, and started two start-ups all at the same time, I was the key demographic for hustle porn, and I hate to admit it, but I fell for it. My ambition and dedication gives me the confidence and the ability to do many things, but it was the inexperience that led me to become a busy fool at times. Hustle porn was a justification, an escape, a reason as to why I’m worthy of success. Surely if I follow these teachings I will reach my goals? Unfortunately, success is not a straight-forward journey, and all hustle porn does is add unnecessary bends. Try to imagine for a minute, I’m sat in my room, about 3 by 3 meters large, where I ate, slept, worked from home during the week since software engineers didn’t get any furlough, worked on my businesses on weekends, all for 14 months straight, with very little time for myself, or time to go outside and reset, because according to hustle porn, resetting meant I wasn’t working. The mental and even physical toll it had on me was immense. Whenever I’d feel tired, I would feel guilty for taking a break or going on holiday, whenever I’d reach small milestones, I wouldn’t celebrate them for the job is not complete. Whenever I would see other people succeeding, I would feel dread, not because of envy, but because of insecurity, contemplating if maybe my all is not enough, since I’m giving it my all by literally sacrificing my sleep and sanity! No one else was pushing me to work this hard, I was being my own critic, reading straight from the hustle culture rulebook.

Luckily, I’ve been able to notice when I was being influenced by hustle porn, and since have realigned my life and my plans to include more balance which unlocks true efficiency by prioritizing the right teachings. With them I’ve seen my attitude, motivation and effectiveness transform, benefitting not only my health and happiness, but my start-ups and productivity tremendously. So much so that I wanted to share this with the world and help others realise there is a better way.

There are many people here that are subliminally influenced by hustle porn. If you’ve ever felt guilty for taking time off work, or perhaps impostor syndrome that you’re not good enough by comparing yourself with the industry standard, it could be that you or the people around you are influenced by hustle porn. While I’ve shown examples of Instagram posts that mostly affect my peers, for you it could take the form of that one YouTube motivational influencer that is that bit too passionate about how many hours you need to work, or that LinkedIn post showing the sacrifices that someone had to make on their journey to success, leaving you feeling empty, believing that in order to achieve your own success you must follow their journey and make equivalent sacrifices. Hustle porn is so embedded within some of our work and professional development teachings that often the influencers teaching us these steps are themselves victims to the same concept. Hustle porn is a sexy concept and sex sells. By having defined rules to success that follow the dramatized look of an entrepreneur working at night while their friends party makes it cool. It no longer matters if you’re working on changing the colour of the font on your website to a slightly greener shade of green for 5 hours instead of creating real meaningful content for your blog, because at the end of the day, you’re hustling. Let’s take a moment to think back to when you were really busy, but somehow managed to do very little in terms of work done. Did you feel stress, fatigue? Did you take a moment to re-evaluate your approach and progress, or did you feel guilty for taking a break? That’s the effect hustle porn has had on our work habits. We’ve become less productive and less happy. The worst of both worlds.

It’s obvious to see how hustle porn is a detriment to your wellbeing, long hours working, increased stress, all lead to chronic health problems. I’m not here to talk about that though. Hustle Culture is well aware of the risks (include gambling slide infographic), and their perception of success greatly outweigh the costs. Speaking in their language, I want you to realise that its not only a detriment to your health, but it also bad for your productivity, meaning even though you think it’s helping you succeed, in reality, its actually slowing you down. I’ve condensed some of the best advice I’ve heard from some of the wisest people I’ve spoken to into the next 30 seconds. I aim for this to offer a glimpse into a better way of working, I recommend everyone to read more into it.

Try working less hours, but doing more crucial work in those hours.

Listen to the Pareto Principle, which says that 20% of the work results in 80% of the results. Stop just doing any work, take time to reflect and evaluate what bit of work would make the biggest impact. If you feel tired or reaching burn out, don’t keep pushing yourself over the edge. Working on burnout as someone has once said, is like driving a Lamborghini in first gear. It’ll only frustrate you even more with how little progress you’re making, and how you can’t go any faster.

Take time to reset, reflect and work on the right things to succeed. Don’t sail blindly towards your goal without readjusting your course. Remember, reset, reflect and work on the right things. If there’s one thing I want you to remember from this talk its this phrase, reset, reflect and work on the right things.

I want you to walk away from this talk knowing that while hustle culture may be prevalent, it’s up to you to choose whether we listen to it. This is not meant to be a feel good talk to justify laziness or complacency. This talk aims to show you that the journey towards your goals does not need to be full of pain and dread, and that applying the right teachings and reflecting often, you can reach your goals faster. This applies to a lot of media in our current world of mass-information. Understand that you don’t have to sacrifice your life to reach your goals, and that everyone’s journey is different, meaning one person’s sacrifices or steps may not take you in the right direction towards your goals. Realise that in order to reach that destination, you must enjoy the journey, don’t burn out on senseless work, rather optimise yourself to work smart using the time you have effectively. Realise that success comes from the work, experience and skills you’ve gained compounding over time, and in order to maximise the compound effect, introduce balance to your life to go the distance. In order for any of us to build the future, we must stay sane in a world full of noise by setting sound principles into our lives, for we are not only in the age of mass-information, but also misinformation.

Let’s end by reflecting back at the last example I gave for a hustle porn post with our newly found perspective.

Let’s hypothetically say that its true, and that the person who originally said that, let’s name them Bob, did do 100 hour weeks, and Bob did celebrate Christmas in January because of business meetings. The whole mantra of “Everyone wants to be a winner but not everyone has what it takes” is false and very far from the truth. The real truth is that Bob could have very well reached the same goals and success with better work life balance, and funnily enough, he could have achieved them faster. Hell, maybe he could have even celebrated Christmas in December.

Thanks for reading and remember to reset, reflect and work on the right things.