Why my 13-hour workdays feel easier than any eight-hour job I had
When I worked as a sportswriter, I was so mentally exhausted I didn’t want to engage in anything else. And that was after an eight-hour job!
When I left my dreaded day job on Jan. 9, I had two major goals: 1) have more time to work on perfecting my fiction and to create kick-ass workflows so I can start treating it like a business, and 2) prove that the “grind culture” is a drawback, not a way to live.
That doesn’t mean I don’t engage in long workdays, which often comprise between 13 and 16 of my 18-19 waking hours. Other than going to the gym and eating my one main meal of the day, I’ve spent most of my time behind the computer, building digital products and finding creative ways to scale up my endeavors.
While 13-16 hours may seem like a long, exhausting trek, the truth is, it hasn’t been. But why is that? It all came about because I found something that I haven’t had in a while, or at least not consistently—a flow state.
Getting into a flow state puts “grind culture” to sleep
One reason an eight or nine-hour day used to be so exhausting is that everything in me saw it as “work.” If you’re looking at a day job as such, one that often involves stress, uncertainty, and dread, it’s going to drain you.
But when you realize that you can bypass all of this by doing something that you find worthwhile, rewarding, and solves problems for other people—problems you care about solving—something shifts.
Suddenly, work doesn’t feel like work. It’s purpose-driven, and the price tag becomes the value of the product you created. That’s what you ultimately want. Work that you want to do, not work that you have to do.
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