“No pain, no gain” is a lie. At least in the way it’s conventionally presented.

The truth is more like “You will probably experience lots of self-inflicted pain unless and until you realize that you can stop punching yourself in the face.”

The Puritan fetishization around pain as part of your penance for being a no-good slobbery sinner must have served some purpose at some time, but it certainly wasn’t the purpose of happiness or even getting more work done. Pain leads to less work getting done.

Adding pain to any endeavor is the surest way to cause the part of you that actually cares for yourself to avoid that endeavor. This avoidance comes in many forms. People who believe in “no pain, no gain” usually call it “procrastination” or “laziness.”

This doesn’t mean that it’s not usefull to do things hard (vigorously), but the way to “go hard” is by first going softly, easily, and the easily naturally warms up to vigorously, all by itself, faster and more fruitfully than you can get there by “going hard.”

And because your body and mind got to this state naturally, easily, without any pain from “pushing yourself,” you didn’t encode any painful cues that could tend to make you want to avoid this activity in the future.

And to be clear, you went just as hard.

Most self-inflicted pain isn’t muscular or cardiovascular (though its manifestation is whole-body). For me, it’s a voice that says COME ON, WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH YOU? YOU’RE NEVER GOING TO ACTUALLY DO ANYTHING ARE YOU? THERE YOU ARE WASTING TIME AGAIN.

To date, this voice has never once helped me get a single thing done, but for most of my life I didn’t know there was an alternative way to “get myself to work.” It always seemed the only option was to press harder, the exact opposite of what would help.

I never NOTICED that the part of me that would occasionally get into a flow state and make cool things would do that all on its own as long as the scary voice wasn’t around. When I let that part of me run free, without pain, I’m both happier and more prolific.

“No pain, no gain” is bullshit.

“Hustle” is bullshit.

“Work ethic” is bullshit.

Not because gaining or getting things done or being prolific is wrong, but because all of these slogans/attitudes produce the OPPOSITE of what they claim.

And more importantly: They make you sad.