#1 The grind begins

“The grind culture leads to early-age burnout but also severely damages the physical and mental health of people”

It’s true for people who don’t know how to hustle, how to grind.

I’ve been doing it more or less knowingly for about 20 years. I had no choice. Without education, coming from a dysfunctional family and having no money for higher education it was the only thing I could do at the time to literally save my bottom.

What I discovered:

The grind is a skill

You need to start small and practice every day. When you reach your tipping point, rest and get back on it. With each rep, you will get more and more done.

You have to know your place

Trying to replicate what the most popular icons do now is plain dumb. They are more experienced than you and they built teams of people to support them. Be honest about how much time and energy you can invest each week.

Your life must change

This one will hurt. You can’t have the life you have now and expect different results out of it. You have to trade the lifestyle you have today to invest time into building skills that will serve you tomorrow.

You must know why you do this

The path of grind is hard and unforgiving. You need to know your reason and remind yourself each day why you do what you do.

Alright then, how does it work in practice?

To go back to my life story I found love 6 years ago and I’ve lost sight of the grind. I traded my progression for making my partner happy. Fast forward to now, I’m back on the grind and this time I’ll know to integrate it into my life rather than trading it out.

Train the grind

As with each kind of training, if you don’t practice you lose touch with the skill. The same happened to me, but it’s easier to rebuild than learn anew. That’s what I’m documenting here and now.

If you’re just starting you should expect you’ll be burning out pretty fast. Be ready. Your intention is to burn out and be smart about it. It’s your feedback loop to know where are your limits.

Now. You burned out a bit. Feeling demotivated and tired. We’ve achieved our goal. Now REST. No work. No thinking about your project. It may take a few days. Rest until you feel you can pick up your project again.

This is your process now. And you’ll repeat it forever. In a few months from the start, you start seeing the difference and you’ll learn a lot about yourself what makes you tired and what makes your recharge faster. Use this knowledge to speed up your reps.

Yes, it’s months. Changing your life is a lifelong process. I’m not selling you snake oil. That’s the reality, if you like it or not.

Find your WHY

With the base process in place let’s start working on WHY. It’s a crucial part of your motivation. You can also use it to get into overdrive and push harder. It costs a lot, but sometimes you need this kick.

My WHY back in the day was the fear of becoming homeless and the urge to escape my life with an abusive mother. Now it’s my fear of becoming poor when I retire and my will to help people who need to escape their often traumatic circumstances.

What is your why? Think about it in your free time and dig deep. Ask why multiple times. Do you want to be rich? Why? To support your family? Why is it important to you personally? Ask the why at least 7 times digging deeper and deeper. You’ll be surprised by what you’ll find and how powerful it is.

Trade your time

As you progress you’ll need more and more time to get things done. You know why you’re doing this. It will help a lot with trading time.

You need to stay honest. When you start you’ll trade 30 minutes of Netflix or scrolling TikTok for some meaningful work or learning. If you’re completely new I’d look first on YouTube and search for tutorials for skills you want to acquire.

As you progress you’ll learn more more how to trade your time. When you understand your WHY, trading a lot of empty pleasures for meaningful progress will become easier and easier.

Your time with family and friends will also improve. Why? You’ll have less of it as you’re busy with your mission but you’ll be very intentional with it and make sure every minute counts.

Paradoxically it will improve your work-life balance as you won’t want to think about work when you enjoy your downtime. And you will consciously trade work time for having fun. And it’s ok.

And to wrap it up for today one last trick for you to use from day one.

Automate, automate, automate and use the negative time.

I do my LinkedIn posts over the weekend for the week to come. I schedule them to be posted at the same time each day. I have Grammarly helping me with my grammar and spelling and I use AI and systems to generate ideas. (The content I always write myself). I’m writing this Newsletter on Thursday evening to be ready on Saturday. This way I use most of the time I have in the evenings to deliver value when I work during the day.

For the rest, I use negative time.

- I read on the train or on the bus

- I reply to comments while getting a drink or coffee

- I do my research during lunchtime

There is a lot of time we have during the day where we can’t really focus but it’s enough to move one of our projects a little bit more forward. We all have only 24 hours to use every day and if you ask me - every minute counts.

And that’s it for the first edition of The Engineering Impact Newsletter. I really appreciate any feedback you have for me. Thank you for reading and …

Until the next one!