What I Learned About ‘The Grind’ in 2020
2020 laid into us in a lot of ways that I suspect many have chosen to keep private. I know I’m one of them. However, I think for many of us it also posed a really big learning opportunity, causing us to reflect on not only ourselves but the way we live our lives as well.
I don’t know if it’s because of the pandemic, or simply because of how my lifestyle changed in 2020 due to work, but for me, one of the big focuses of learning was about my attitude towards the fabled ‘Grind.’
I have always been a chronic workaholic. To a serious point of unhealthiness. As a teenager I used to profess how I would never want a partner or care about personal relationships if it meant any kind of distraction from focusing on my career. If I finished something I was working on and didn’t feel stressed or exhausted, then I felt like I hadn’t worked hard enough, and I should immediately get going on something else. Even in university, when I would have stress-induced seizures during exam time, I just took it as a sign that I was doing something right.
When I decided to quit my Master’s degree and pursue a career in esports, I was faced with something pretty exciting: I got to focus all of my time onto making this work. That meant casting, VOD review, creating content — everything I loved doing. And I got to do it all the time. I would stay up late at night slaving away at my PC, constantly trying to curate my work online into an irresistible portfolio for those who I wanted to hire me. Not only that, but simply the image of being that person who never stops working, never gives up — that was like a drug to me.
And I even had friends who would make comments about how hard I worked; those would be the compliments I valued above all others. It was like an oxytocin rush, and I knew I was onto something good.
But in hindsight, I neglected everything else in my life. I can’t think of any other hobbies and interests I put real time into. Because I didn’t really have any time. I socialised a lot, but only really with people who were in my direct line of fire — people involved in the work I was doing, or at an event I was attending. It’s not that I didn’t see my friends from outside of esports, but I didn’t nurture those friendships like I should have. I was in a relationship, but even that at the time couldn’t be separated from the interminable obsession I had with my work. Everything was on hold until I made my goal. I didn’t really care how stressed or emotionally affected by it I was.
Well, in 2020 I did make my goal. It was the most surreal feeling in the world to be offered the precise dream job I’d been gunning for since September 2018, but here I was. Thankfully, I didn’t struggle with the, ‘What now?’ issue — my goal evolved into a much more important albeit subtle one of constant gradual improvement and evolution. But almost as soon as I reached this milestone, the Grind attitude stopped.
Why? Surely this was the time to hit the gas, not ease up on it!
No. I realised pretty quickly that protecting myself from burnout was infinitely more important than overdoing everything. My new job was more intense and long-term than anything I’d had before. I had to be able to sustain myself on a trajectory of improvement, and not self-sabotage with burnout and stress. I don’t know how, it was like a natural instinct, but I knew that now I was here, I couldn’t afford to go forward with my 2019 approach to work.
The pandemic certainly didn’t help. There were times that I withdrew almost completely from social relationships I had. Close friends of mine I hardly spoke to for months, and even my parents at times barely heard from me for weeks on end. All of this helped me realise how much I needed to look after myself in a balanced way outside of work hours. I went back to interests I’d had before, and spent time on them too, rather than just sacrificially donating all of my time to doing more, and more, and more work. I felt like I was rebuilding on the foundations of myself as a person to set up someone who would be much better equipped for the long term, and much more fulfilled and developed in all areas of life. And being fulfilled outside of work meant work felt more fulfilling too.
In October, my mental health took a sharp downward turn. I think we all experienced this at some point in the pandemic, and many of us probably still are in that hole now. But for me, October to early January was when it happened worst. As a result, I took a pretty strict hiatus. Outside of work, I didn’t exert myself with extras: I rarely played videogames, didn’t stream much. It felt alien to everything I knew and everything I was passionate about. I’d see my peers get praised and celebrated for content they were creating and work they were doing, and would feel like I wasn’t doing enough. I felt lazy. But all the while I absolutely knew that if I forced myself to do it I would end up somewhere much worse than where I’d started. So I allowed myself to ride the wave and just listen to my body on this one.
And my God, I am so happy I did. Letting myself naturally figure out what was best for me and what would set me up for success when I was ready to get back into it was indubitably the right decision. Had I not done that, I would have ended up prolonging the mental health hellhole I was in, and maybe grown resentful of something for which I am deeply and truly passionate. No matter what, I didn’t want to make the same mistakes I did in 2019 that made me fragile and emotionally volatile.
Since having my current job, I’ve spoken to a number of people who have said something along the lines of, ‘I just want to look like the person who puts in the most work.’ And every time they have, it’s made me shudder a bit. Not because of anything nefarious, but because that was the mindset that I feel drove me to a place that I realised was shockingly unhealthy. I know I’m a naturally hardworking person, but you need to be hardworking in the right places. And that doesn’t just mean extra prep, extra notes, extra content, extra review. It means working to develop yourself into a much stronger and healthier person with the capability of performing better on a foundational level. I stopped worrying about whether I looked like the hardest working person in the room, and started worrying more about being true to whatever I knew I needed. If that meant putting in extra hours, great. If it meant pulling back and focusing on some out-of-work things, also great.
And as much as it can be hard knowing that the outside world won’t necessarily always see the value in your decisions, that doesn’t mean they aren’t the most valuable decisions you can make. Whatever happens, I know I can do better work with the attitude I’ve instituted in 2020 than I ever could previous to that. And that alone is an incredibly satisfying feeling.
