Everyone needs a little extra motivation sometimes. And it sure is nice to get a few well-timed words to fire you up when you’re feeling low.
My first memories of motivational aphorisms came from Dad. As a former college football player, he loved to quote Vince Lombardi – the legendary Green Bay Packers coach – who’d say things like “the only place success comes before work is in the dictionary.”
Quotes like that were even more commonplace as a teen, echoing through our locker rooms and huddles. They came from coaches, from teammate’s fathers, even from the old-timers around town who followed local high school sports.
And although my teammates and I often joked about “Coach’s cheezy speeches”, deep down we all knew what we got out of them. They may have even helped us win a game or two!
Fast forward to adulthood, and those kinds of speeches just don’t come around much anymore. It’s not like my colleagues or workmates say things like “I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.” (Thomas Jefferson).
This type of messaging may have fallen out of favor in the office, but if you need a quick dose, all it takes is a smartphone and a social media app to get it in spades.
The Rise of Hustle Porn
In today’s attention economy, those who come up with catchy motivational phrases are rewarded with clicks, shares, and follows – enabling impactful ones to reach millions of eyeballs every day. The more the content is viewed, the more valuable it becomes, leading creators to develop newer, bolder, and what can sometimes be even harmful messaging. And as someone with a slight propensity to scroll online entrepreneurship and fitness content, I can personally attest to how frequently it tends to show up in my social feed.
In the entrepreneurship and business circles I tend to scroll, these motivational aphorisms are colloquially known as hustle porn – narratives that promote the belief that success comes from continuously grinding and abandoning any sense of work-life balance.
Coined as performative workaholism by The New York Times, hustle porn often promotes unhealthy lifestyle habits, a myopic focus on results over everything, and expectations that are unreachable by the majority of viewers. Consuming it can lead to burnout, mental health challenges, and even stifle organizational innovation, simply by glossing over the essential human needs for rest, relationships, and recreation, to name a few.
It’s voices like Elon Musk who are at the forefront of this culture, with quotes like:
Work like hell. I mean you just have to put in 80 to 100 hour weeks every week. [This] improves the odds of success. If other people are putting in 40 hour work weeks and you’re putting in 100 hour work weeks, then even if you’re doing the same thing you know that you will achieve in 4 months what it takes them a year to achieve.
*Just do a quick search for “Elon Musk Shirtless” to see how this mentality can wreak havoc on your health.
Your Brain on Hustle Porn
When you view hustle porn, your brain’s reward system kicks in and you are flooded with a cascade of neurochemicals that make you alert, energized, emotional, and often feeling pretty damn good. This not only makes you want to come back for more, but it’s also highly effective at embedding these messages in your brain’s learning and memory centers.
Catchy hustle porn increases dopamine levels by presenting ideas or goals as rewarding – enhancing attention, motivation, and goal-directed behavior. It elicits an emotional response and a strong sense of connection with the messenger that triggers the release of endorphins, creating feelings of euphoria and well-being. It stimulates glutamate activity, facilitating synaptic plasticity and the strengthening of neural connections associated with learning new information or establishing new goals. And it increases norepinephrine, helping you to sharpen focus and retain the messages you’re given.
This cocktail of chemicals provides all the mechanisms you need to lock in the hustle porn as your new truth, which can lead you toward unhealthy and unsustainable behaviors – particularly when the messaging is emboldened by the messenger’s innate desire for attention. To compound matters, the frequency of exposure you get from social media leads to frequent triggering of this reward system, which may dampen the positive emotions you should experience when you’re actually doing the hard thing.
Hustle porn is similar to other addictive behaviors like doing drugs. The easier access you have to it, the more you do it, and the less you experience those good feelings in other domains of life.
Fighting Fire with Fire: The Rise of Recovery Porn
It is this idea that unless you are suffering, unless you are grinding, unless you are working every hour of every day and posting about it on Instagram, you’re not working hard enough. It’s such bullshit, such utter bullshit. It has deleterious effects not just on your business but on your wellbeing.” – Alexis Ohanian (Founder of Reddit)
I first discovered the growing number of voices contrasting hustle porn during my recovery from burnout 11 years ago. I had just sold my company, looked and felt like total dog shit, and was determined to recapture my health and joie de vivre before considering my next entrepreneurial endeavor.
And although the digital landscape was still dominated by hustle porn that celebrated long hours and minimal sleep as the pathway to success, a new narrative was emerging that suggested it can take a negative toll on mental and physical health. Rather than glorifying ceaseless work and grind culture, it promoted sophisticated methods of recuperation and rest.
This new wave of media – I call it recovery porn – emphasizes rest, recovery, and self-care as not just beneficial, but essential to peak performance and success. Instead of grinding and sleepless nights, it advocates for the use of tools and practices aimed at optimizing recovery – ranging from sleep hacks that promise a more restorative rest, to ice baths and saunas for improving mental clarity, to cryochambers and hyperbaric oxygen tanks touted for their advanced healing properties – each painting a picture of recovery as a cutting-edge science.
If you’re into peak performance like I am, it’s likely your social feeds are consistently serving up some form of recovery porn content. But if you’re not familiar with this concept, here are just a few of the influencers promoting recovery porn to their millions of followers.
- Tim Ferriss: An early proponent of lifestyle design and optimization, Ferriss explores themes related to health, wellness, and recovery in his books, podcast, and social media content.
- Joe Rogan: Known for his widely popular podcast, Rogan frequently discusses health and wellness topics with a variety of guests, covering everything from float tanks and cryotherapy to nutrition and fitness.
- Wim Hof: Also known as “The Iceman,” Hof has gained international recognition for his methods and teachings that involve cold exposure, breathing techniques, and meditation for health and recovery.
- Ben Greenfield: A former bodybuilder and triathlete, Greenfield is now a prominent figure in the biohacking community, where he shares recovery and wellness strategies through his podcast, books, and social media.
- Arianna Huffington: After her own experiences with burnout, the Huffington Post founder became an advocate for sleep and wellness, launching Thrive Global to promote healthier work-life balance and recovery practices.
- Andrew Huberman: The renowned neuroscientist from Stanford University shares insights on how various practices, including specific types of exercise, light exposure, and sleep, can profoundly impact mental health, cognitive function, and overall well-being.
- Peter Attia: Through his podcast, “The Drive”, the popular longevity physician covers strategies aimed at improving the quality of health, emphasizing recovery and lifestyle medicine.
The emergence of “recovery porn” in mainstream media presents an intriguing counterpoint to the relentless work ethic promoted by “hustle porn,” signaling a shift in societal values towards a more balanced and holistic view of well-being and performance. This movement goes beyond merely encouraging rest; it transforms recovery into a ritualistic practice, often enriched by advanced biohacking and wellness technologies. Yet the message is clear: in today’s world, actively focusing on one’s physical and mental recovery is as valuable and necessary as the effort put into work. And as this idea gains popularity, it’s changing our collective views on productivity and success, promoting healthier, more sustainable ways to achieve goals that emphasize the importance of downtime and recuperation.
An Equation to Balance Hustle and Recovery
Around 7-8 years ago, as I was preparing to move to Germany and start my PhD, a friend who was concerned I might fall back into my workaholic ways recommended I read the book Peak Performance: Elevate Your Game, Avoid Burnout, and Thrive with the New Science of Success by Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness. He said that the core message of the book had provided him with a simple framework to balance life’s demands that had resonated.
The book’s core thesis is that the way to perform your best is to optimally alternate between periods of intense work and rest, priming the body and mind for enhanced productivity. Stulberg and Magness call this the Growth Equation, which suggests that growth results from the interplay between stress (challenges) and rest (recovery). And it too comes with a catchy soundbite and easily consumable imagery, a simple and memorable equation: strain + recovery = growth
In the years since I read about the Growth Equation, I’ve incorporated it into almost all my workshops and lectures on founder peak performance, highlighting its usefulness in virtually all domains of entrepreneurial well-being.
Developing Your Growth Algorithm
Today, in 2024, the dominant narrative around entrepreneurship seems to have evolved further from hustle porn culture to a more balanced approach that emphasizes recovery and self-care. And the rise in recovery porn illuminates what is undoubtedly a greater cultural shift towards sustainable models of productivity that value health and well-being.
As all bodies, minds, and experiences are not created equal, entrepreneurs in the wild must do more than simply adopt the methods used by others. You can only take the frameworks and principles provided to you and factor in the variables unique to your journey to transform the standard growth equation into a peak performance algorithm that suits your specific experiences.
By defining your own personal Growth Algorithm, you can establish the parameters and processes you need for work and rest, integrating only the practices that resonate most and fit into your lifestyle. Just remember that taking time to recharge is not a detour from success, but a vital part of the journey towards it.
One more thing…
Next week, I’ll be publicly announcing my new Startup Neuroscience & Entrepreneurial Flow course. This 16-week online course consists of 8 modules designed to help you level up your game through science. We’re only accepting eight participants this time around and are making it available to subscribers before anyone else.
If you’d like to learn more, just reply to this newsletter with a simple message that says “More Info”.
Stay flowy my friends,
Gerrit