Hustle culture lied to you (here’s a better way)

0:00 Hustle culture is back.

0:02 Louder, prouder, and somehow even more extreme.

0:05 Early morning routines, bold claims, and whatever the[ __] this is.

0:10 But a counter movement is also gaining ground.

0:12 Call it anti-hustle, essentialism, or slow productivity.

0:16 A generation of knowledge workers are starting

0:19 to rethink what it actually means to find success.

0:22 And I'm one of them.

0:23 After years of grinding 50 plus hours a week,

0:26 I cut my schedule down to about 25.

0:28 It's the slowest and most intentional pace I've worked at in over a decade.

0:32 And the really surprising part about this entire

0:34 experience is that I haven't lost momentum at all.

0:38 And in fact, if anything, I think I'm starting to make some of my best work yet.

0:42 This video is sponsored by Squarespace.

0:43 I'll share more about why I use them for all my websites later.

0:46 There's no shortage of books, podcasts,

0:48 and YouTube videos promising the secret to productivity.

0:52 Each one sharing a new tip, routine, or morning ritual.

0:55 Productivity is how much money you get out for the time you put in.

0:58 There is actually a hidden secret to productivity and fulfillment.

1:02 You know exactly what you need to do right now.

1:05 I've always secretly wanted to be a machine.

1:07 Instead of spending time getting in the mood to work, just stop working.

1:11 When people ask me like, "Hey Dan, what did you do to be successful?

1:14 To drive those cars or fly around on your plane?" Uh, it's what I don't do.

1:17 You ain't been getting done.

1:19 The advice is a mixed bag.

1:21 On one side, you've got the hustle bros telling you to wake up at 4:00 a.m.

1:25 down a protein shake and grind until your eyes bleed.

1:28 On the other end, you've got the quiet quitting movement.

1:30 People telling you to do the bare

1:31 minimum and coast towards your bimonthly paycheck.

1:34 Somewhere in the middle, you'll find Cal Newport.

1:36 His bestselling books like Deep Work

1:38 and Digital Minimalism push back against traditional wisdom.

1:42 Cal recently laid out a more sustainable

1:44 approach to work in his book, Slow Productivity.

1:47 There's been a lot of talk about productivity in recent years.

1:50 What did you feel was missing from the conversation

1:52 that led you to introduce this idea of slow productivity?

1:56 Well, in knowledge work in particular, we use the word productivity all the time

2:00 and we have no idea what we mean by it.

2:02 So, if you look back at industrial manufacturing or you look at farming,

2:05 productivity is really clearly defined, right?

2:07 It's a ratio.

2:08 How much output did you produce for each unit input?

2:11 How many bushels of wheat were produced per acre of farmland?

2:14 How many model T's came out of the factory

2:16 for paid worker hour that is on your payroll.

2:19 And if that number got better, then whatever you were doing was more productive.

2:22 But when we moved to knowledge work,

2:24 where we were largely using our brains to produce value,

2:26 we lost the ability to make those simple measurements

2:29 because there was no one thing that we were doing.

2:31 There was no one collection of widgets we could point to and say,

2:33 "Here's what I actually produce today." Maybe I'm working

2:36 on four or five different things and what those things

2:38 are might vary over time and they're different than what

2:40 the person next to me is working on as well.

2:42 So without the ability to measure inputs and outputs,

2:46 all of our existing definitions of productivity began to falter.

2:50 And I think this has been one of the defining problems

2:52 especially of the late 20th and early 21st century in work.

2:56 I've always had difficulty finding balance with my work from my early days

2:59 as a freelancer and especially after starting my YouTube channel back in 2017.

3:04 I've been pretty open about those struggles.

3:06 Over the past 2 weeks, I've had pretty severe anxiety, pretty crippling anxiety.

3:12 I have thought about quitting YouTube.

3:14 I'm not saying that I'm having a full-blown mental breakdown.

3:17 I'm just saying that it's getting close.

3:21 For years, I found myself stuck in a cycle of churn and burn.

3:25 I called it ambition.

3:26 But really, I didn't know how to stop.

3:28 But after becoming a parent, my priorities have changed.

3:31 The nights and weekends I used to spend catching up

3:33 on work are now time that I'd rather spend with my family.

3:37 I needed a completely different framework.

3:39 And that's where slow productivity came in.

3:41 A philosophy for approaching knowledge work in a sustainable

3:44 and meaningful way built around three core principles.

3:47 If you really want to create a sustainable career, produce stuff that matters.

3:52 Do in a way that is satisfying so you don't burn out.

3:53 There's three things that matter.

3:55 You need to be careful about how many things you're working on at the same time.

3:58 And in fact, do fewer things at once.

4:00 Two, you have to work at more of a natural pace.

4:02 So the amount of time you assume things are going to take, make that realistic.

4:06 Finally, you have to obsess over quality.

4:08 So the quality of what you produce really

4:10 matters and you should care a lot about it.

4:12 Those three principles stand uh in opposition to pseudo

4:16 productivity which says all we care about is visible busyness.

4:20 I'm going to break down the rest of this video into three sections

4:23 diving into each and explain how they help me finally find work life balance.

4:28 I've been a content creator for the past 15 years and I've

4:31 seen all the advice about how to build a successful business.

4:34 Most of it boils down to one clear message.

4:37 Do more.

4:38 Make more videos.

4:39 Write a newsletter.

4:40 Post shorts on Instagram, Tik Tok, and YouTube.

4:41 Launch a podcast, engage with every comment and DM, and publish a Patreon page.

4:45 Create a digital course, a free giveaway to promote it,

4:47 and an email salesunnel to run on autopilot.

4:49 Oh, and don't forget to stay on top of trends,

4:51 repurpose your content, track analytics, experiment with new formats,

4:54 and somehow manage the never-ending admin of running a business.

4:56 There's always another skill to pick up,

4:58 always another project to tackle, another plate to keep spinning.

5:02 But if you want to start reclaiming your time,

5:04 the first key is to do fewer things.

5:07 Well, when I tell people they should do fewer things,

5:09 they get worried that what I'm suggesting is that they accomplish fewer things.

5:14 But actually, it's a very pragmatic recommendation because what

5:18 happens when you have too many things on your plate?

5:20 Well, each of these things that you've

5:22 agreed to do brings with it administrative overhead.

5:24 I mean, I have to send emails to people.

5:26 I have to have meetings with people.

5:27 I have to think about it.

5:28 There's just overhead to tasks that you take on from small to large.

5:31 I call that overhead tax.

5:33 As you say yes to more and more things,

5:35 the amount of total overhead tax you're paying begins to add up.

5:38 And because your time each day is finite,

5:41 there's only so many hours you can actually work.

5:43 After a while, if your plate is sufficiently full,

5:46 most of your day now becomes wrangling overhead packs.

5:49 The real work might take a certain number of hours.

5:52 Say writing an article in 10 hours.

5:54 But the hidden costs pile on.

5:56 email threads with editors, revisions, chasing permissions, invoicing,

6:00 your 10-hour project turns into 20 pretty quickly.

6:04 A few months ago, I started to think about how I could reduce my own workload.

6:08 And the first idea I came up with seemed a little bit crazy,

6:10 if not completely reckless.

6:12 I asked myself, what if I only made long- form YouTube videos and that was it?

6:17 Could that be enough?

6:18 Would I still find it fulfilling?

6:20 Would it help me grow creatively and professionally?

6:22 Or would it be a financial disaster?

6:24 I decided it was worth it to experiment.

6:26 And that meant making some really hard cuts.

6:28 No more weekly newsletters, no more endless social content,

6:31 no more behind-the-scenes videos of my bonus channel,

6:34 no more podcast episodes, no more interviews,

6:37 practically no meetings, and very little phone calls.

6:40 I stopped doing about 90% of the work I thought was essential,

6:43 even if I enjoyed it,

6:45 even if it was fun to make way for my core mission, my most important work.

6:50 So, of course, there are still some things that I do outside of YouTube videos,

6:53 like managing my YouTube course and doing business administration stuff,

6:57 but I was noticeably less busy with my overall workload.

7:01 The first month of adjusting to this new pace, I felt so much lighter.

7:05 I was less frustrated that I was constantly falling behind

7:09 and I was more proud of the work that I was making.

7:12 But there was still one thing that I had to contend with.

7:15 My inner hustle, bro.

7:16 That voice in my head that kept whispering,

7:20 "Shouldn't you be doing more?" In many corners of the internet,

7:26 hustle is romanticized to the extreme.

7:29 Endless work days are glorified.

7:31 Rest is dismissed as weakness.

7:33 And some people literally don't even know what a weekend is.

7:36 I'm going to Spain Friday till Monday morning.

7:39 I call that's like a mini retirement.

7:41 That's a weekend.

7:42 It's a weekend.

7:42 It's a mini retirement.

7:43 There's this cultural reverence for hard work.

7:45 As if the more hours you put in, the more virtuous you are.

7:49 They are so soft.

7:50 They have no work ethic.

7:51 I'm not afraid to die on a treadmill.

7:53 I'm 22 miles in,[ __] Ripple down.

7:56 4x 5x down your hustle.

7:59 Most people are weak.

8:00 Most people don't want to go to that extra mile.

8:02 No one will outwork me.

8:04 No one.

8:05 Just takes work.

8:06 Shitloads and shitloads of work.

8:08 You're allowed to be selfish.

8:09 You're happy to give up leisure, sleep, family time.

8:13 I will not be outworked.

8:15 Period.

8:16 To suggest that hard work isn't the foundation for success

8:19 would be a slap in the face to most Americans.

8:22 So, there are plenty of examples of high

8:24 achievers and organizations that thrive on hustle.

8:26 From tech startups to obsessive athletes,

8:29 there are TV shows with extremely demanding production schedules.

8:33 What would you say to someone that points at these examples

8:36 as proof that hard work and hustle creates better outcomes?

8:41 So there are some fields in which it is inevitable that you have

8:44 to work really long hours because structurally it's been set up that way.

8:48 But most definitions that people have for avoiding

8:51 mediocrity and having a professional life that is

8:53 this interesting or successful that they're proud

8:55 of isn't actually well served by that approach.

8:58 You study the lives of people who get really good at thing master chefs.

9:01 You look at master comedians or writers.

9:03 Uh it's not about a hustle in a given day.

9:06 It's about I stuck with this craft for 10 years.

9:08 I didn't get distracted by other things.

9:10 It's orthogonal to hustle.

9:12 There's rarely been a time in this 20-year writing career where I'm

9:15 up late writing or something like this, but I've never not been writing.

9:19 It's not hard in the sense of, "Oh god, I worked 15 hours and I'm not sleeping."

9:23 But I'm always writing and it's focused and it's

9:26 relentless and I'm always trying to get better

9:27 and I'm always trying to hone that craft.

9:29 Doing the stuff that really is making

9:31 you better that other people aren't willing

9:32 to do and just uh insisting on doing that day after day after day.

9:35 That's almost always the recipe for things that are awesome.

9:38 When the only productivity tool you have is to act like a human battering ram,

9:42 the consequences are inevitable.

9:44 Burnout, anxiety, depression,

9:46 a life that serves your work instead of the other way around.

9:49 And that's why one of the key principles

9:50 of slow productivity is to work at a natural pace.

9:54 The important thing to focus on is time scale.

9:57 The real question isn't how much you can produce in a single day,

10:00 week, or month, but how much you can accomplish over the course of years.

10:05 When you think this way, it suddenly makes sense to have leisurely days,

10:08 to take an afternoon siesta, or to even brace yourself, take a weekend.

10:13 So, to have lots of mini retirements during the year

10:15 is what I've tried to do in the last few years.

10:17 I'm not sure I'm doing it very successfully.

10:19 When I cut down my commitments and gave myself

10:21 a reasonable deadline of one video every 2 weeks,

10:24 I naturally began working at a calmer, more sustainable pace.

10:28 Fewer projects meant less overhead tax,

10:30 which gave me hours back that I hadn't had in years.

10:33 I used that time to invest in my health.

10:35 I doubled my strength training days from 2 to 4.

10:38 I kept up my weekly game of squash and I found time to prepare more healthy

10:42 meals versus resorting to the processed meals I

10:45 would go to when I got super busy.

10:47 All in, I usually work 5 to 6 hours a day now,

10:49 which feels crazy compared to the past.

10:52 But here's the important thing.

10:54 Moving slower hasn't made me less ambitious.

10:57 It's made me more focused.

10:58 Because even though I'm working at a slower pace,

11:01 it doesn't mean that I don't want to produce exceptional work.

11:04 I'm really into this whole slow productivity thing.

11:06 So much so that I'm going to do

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12:15 up with my dumb[ __] For those that embrace slow productivity,

12:19 the whole point isn't just to work less.

12:21 While they might have 4-day work weeks or take multiple months off per year,

12:25 their goal is still to create better work.

12:28 The third principle of slow productivity is obsess over quality.

12:32 At first glance, it seems like it doesn't belong with the other two.

12:37 Why did you think this was an important part of the puzzle?

12:39 If you take that piece out,

12:41 the whole slow productivity project is going to begin to falter.

12:44 Because without that piece,

12:45 you're just building up an antagonistic relationship with work.

12:48 If you obsess over quality,

12:49 you're going to get better at things that people care about.

12:51 When you get better at things that people care about,

12:53 you have more leverage over the way that your working life unfolds.

12:57 If you're on the ball, if you're organized, it's like, "Yeah,

12:59 I'm going to get this done next Wednesday." And you

13:00 give it to them next Wednesday and it's good.

13:02 Yeah, sure.

13:02 You got this queue or these quotas or like whatever you want to do, right?

13:05 You want to quote a lot of Cal Newport, like that's great.

13:08 Uh because you deliver.

13:09 Personally, I think about quality a lot as a content creator.

13:12 I see it as an opportunity to stand out in an increasingly noisy landscape.

13:17 But that's not exactly a popular opinion.

13:20 If you want to write down one word and stick it

13:22 in your mirror from this whole talk, the word is volume.

13:25 30, 40, 50, 60 pieces of content a day.

13:30 There's a lot of talk online about output.

13:32 How often you post, how many times a day you show up on every platform.

13:36 But for creators and artists who aren't merely personalities,

13:40 who actually care about their work,

13:42 and who find purpose in the creative process,

13:44 turnurning out more content isn't the answer.

13:47 Instagram currently gets 22 million videos uploaded to its platform every day.

13:51 Do you really think making an extra three videos

13:54 this week are going to help you stand out?

13:56 If you want to rise above the noise and make

13:58 something that people actually remember and that leaves an impact,

14:01 it makes more sense to put your energy into fewer things.

14:04 It's not about sheer volume.

14:06 It's about using the time you have to create the best work you're capable of.

14:10 So, the videos that I've been making lately,

14:12 videos like this one, have been a big shift for me.

14:14 I've cleared my plate.

14:15 I've done fewer things, and I've poured everything into each one.

14:19 And something really cool happened.

14:20 I started getting comments saying,

14:22 "These were some of my best videos yet." And while that was encouraging,

14:25 if I'm being honest, it wasn't the most important part.

14:28 What mattered most was that I was proud of the work that I

14:31 was making instead of just rushing from one project to the next.

14:35 Thanks so much to Cal for joining me for this one.

14:37 I'll link his book in the description below.

14:39 I highly recommend it.

14:40 And if you want to catch my full interview with Cal,

14:42 you can subscribe to me over on Patreon.

14:45 Thanks so much and I'll see you next time.