Becky Becky and the toxicity of grind culture
You can start a business and be present for your kids, just ditch the hustle and do one thing.
“If I’m awake, I’m either working or working out.”
This is a quote from a prominent entrepreneur and viral YouTuber. I won’t mention his name here, but it shouldn’t be hard to find if you want to.
I like this guy. I respect him. He didn’t get where he is today by luck - he got there by hard work and a dedication to consistently ‘showing up’. He’s undoubtedly sacrificed a a hell of a lot. Hustle, grind, relentlessly pursue success at all costs.
And, in my humble opinion, this is a recipe for a life less lived.
Don’t get me wrong, if this is the path you’ve chosen, all power to you. But to me, the opportunity cost isn’t financial or personal success, it’s missing out on my 5-year-old twin boys laughing about ‘Becky Becky’, a stuffed toy robin, named for reasons only they know, that gets flown around the house and occasionally thrown in the toilet. It’s being unavailable when my wife wants to read me an excerpt from Heather Shumaker or Naomi Fisher. It’s feeling guilty when I choose to watch reruns of Scrubs or play Sackboy on the PS5 in favour of building my side business.
I don’t believe we were born to grind; to live out our lives in a constant state of productivity in order to someday achieve a level of success that’ll enable us to live the ‘high life’ - when we’re too old to enjoy it without needing to pee every five minutes.
The beauty is in the chaos, not being wealthy or successful enough to escape it.
YouTubers glamorise the notion of ‘grinding’, replete with dropping the f-bomb at every opportunity, to get us to believe that the only way to a seven-figure income is to forsake family and personal interests and sell our soul to the ‘algorithm’.
I don’t know about you, but I’d much prefer my epitaph to read ‘loving husband and father’ than ‘hustled his way to a million dollars’.
So what’s my point here?
Even after filtering out all the silliness (making $700 in 4 hours using Google Maps, ‘boring’ $200,000 as a solo freelancer, using AI to make $19,438 in 2 hours a day - these are all real examples from YouTube), we’re left with the idea that in order to start a successful business we need to wake up at 4am, meditate for an hour, take a cold pool plunge, run 5k, eat a keto breakfast, achieve 98% productivity (bearing in mind that the real ‘magic’ happens in the 5 to 9 - those sacred 4 hours after we finish our 9 to 5 day job) and get a solid 8 hours sleep before starting all over again.
If you’re a parent of young children, you’re shaking your head in disbelief.
If you’re a parent of SEN children, you’re rolling on the floor laughing. Thinking about it now, I’m not sure when LOL killed ROFL. Must’ve been some time around the demise of Myspace.
The point I’m making is for the vast majority of people with young children this advice is meaningless. With the best will in the world you’re not going to be able to carve out hours a day to build a business while working full-time, parenting, and maintaining a loving relationship with your significant other.
What you can do is this:
Ignore the 21-year-old YouTube billionaires who for some unfathomable reason dedicate their lives to selling you courses on how to become a 21-year-old YouTube billionaire (“just copy me”)
Do one thing today that’ll take you closer to building your own business. You read that right - one thing. That could be spending 10 minutes researching business ideas to see what feels natural to you, or if you’re past the ideation stage maybe registering your domain name or writing copy for your landing page. It doesn’t matter so much what the ‘one thing’ is, just that you do the one thing.
Repeat step 2. Preferably daily, but as often as time allows. And over time you’ll notice something incredible happening - you’re starting to build a business. It doesn’t matter if that takes an hour, a week, a month or a decade, the point is you’re moving forward, and you’re doing it sustainably.
This week, I’ve been spending one hour a day learning Next.js and Supabase to build out my digital media business.
What will be your one thing today?
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