We’re going to get a little dark here to begin with. A little bleak. But bear with me as the payoff will be a cheery one. And hopefully a helpful one. I’ll try my utmost.
So. The Misery Tax is an important concept for you to wrap your head around. And it’s a very, very simple one to understand. If you have ever held down a job, if you have ever been an employee, if you have ever commuted to an office or worn a uniform or lived in a big city you have almost certainly paid the Misery Tax in some form.
Let’s attempt a definition.
The Misery Tax- an ad hoc form of expenditure wherein an unhappy worker feels compelled to spend a proportion of their wages on things that allow them to continue to function and work. This usually takes the form of sugary food, caffeine, alcohol and ‘retail therapy’
Are you with me?
Then let’s get in to the nuance.
The Hidden Cost Of Work
The problem with The Misery Tax is that it is almost always unaccounted for. Even by those who are fairly money-savvy and spending-conscious. It nibbles away at various spending envelopes- entertainment, food, clothing, travel- while the impetus behind it remains unacknowledged. At least consciously.
I’ll repeat this point in different words to make it emphatic.
If you don’t like the job you work or the life you are living you will spend more of your disposable income either during work hours or immediately afterwards on things to cheer you up. On things to keep you going and to keep you functioning in the job. This is the Misery Tax.
This compensatory spending drains your resources, which diminishes your ability to save and thus means you become increasingly stuck in the job. Which is depressing. Which means you want to have a beer or a donut or a next day delivery spree on Amazon. Which means...
Now, I know today is the day of rest and that you probably don’t want to be pondering such things. And I know that we normally talk about pleasant things here like going for a nice walk or having some lunch. But I think this one needs to be addressed.
Sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and face the facts.
I think many of the things we do for pleasure are mere coping mechanisms, they are more like oil to a machine than balm to a contented soul. Our indulgences are unhealthy not only for what they consist of but for the reason they are used. And that reason is as a surface level cessation of suffering because we don’t have the time or inclination (or indeed courage) to tackle the problem at the root.
Perhaps this is why wages are often referred to as ‘compensation.’
The Hustle Hustle
‘I can’t go on. I’ll go on.’
~Samuel Beckett.
Now had I more time or the desire to bolster and bloat this piece with facts and figures, I would attempt to lay out a history of all of this. A chronology. But I don’t see the point, in all honesty.
Not to be presumptuous but I know you know what I am talking about with this one. You are reading this during your scant free time and you want solutions rather than an esoteric history lesson. Your time is precious because it is scarce and me writing thousands of words of unbidden labour history would be doing you a disservice.
So, I’ll keep this focused on the present. On you.
Another presumption: When you have previously sensed that The Misery Tax is draining you and that compensatory pleasure spending is diminishing your quality of life you have attempted to solved the puzzle via the Work Ethic solution.
This ‘Hustle and Grind’ fix has been popularised by people with large YouTube accounts and a whole host of courses and books to sell you. They are persuasive. I am not judging you as even I, a shoe-in for England’s Laziest Man Regional Finalist, have been charmed by this siren song.
Because on paper it kind of makes sense. Life is stagnant, you are in a rut, momentum is either non-existent or negative. Rudimentary physics says motions is needed, and motion in this case comes from effort. From change. So more work is needed. The post work hours where The Misery Tax is collected need to be replaced with yet more work, work for yourself, work ON yourself, work to work yourself out of the debt that the seemingly never ending Misery Tax demands of you.
So, as the motivational keynote speakers themselves say- hands up. Hands up those of you who have vowed to start hustling and working harder and achieving success. Okay good.
Now hands up those of you who were able to sustain this for any length of time before sliding back to working the 9-5 and then being tired or vaguely indulgent and hedonistic in the off hours.
I thought so.
See the problem isn’t you. (Fear not, this is not the prelude to a sales pitch). The problem is the approach. The psychology of it.
Simply put if you keep beating yourself up you’re going to knock yourself out.
If you keep doubling down on a bad bet you will just lose the game quicker.
If you keep treating yourself as a slave, as someone unworthy of respect or care or love then this will manifest in your demeanour and actions and therefore your results.
And that is about the worst methodology for achieving that I can think of.
Free(ing) Advice
So the way to get a rebate on the Misery Tax is this. Give in. Let go. Take it easy.
Drop the guilt regard your off-hours productivity. (I’m going to ask you to continue reading on for a little longer with an open mind. This is not defeatist nihilism, I assure you.)
The above idler mode is one of the leitmotif of these newsletters so far. Why. Because it is effective.
Now, some people are extremely driven and so the hustle mentality comes naturally to them. The people who actually give the motivational keynotes don’t have to be told to hustle, it is in there blood.
But to many of there audience who do have to be told, especially to those who have more artistic and creative leanings, it is poisonous. It does no good.
And given the signal I put out and the fact that like attracts like there is a good chance that you, dear reader, fit into this demographic.
So I tell you from experience to relax.
I tell you that if you do so the chain of events will run something like this: First, you give up on beating yourself up and hustling and unnecessary early mornings and cold showers and all the rest of it. Thus, you signal to yourself that you care for yourself. You feel a little happier. You loosen up. This alone makes work marginally more bearable. This reduces the extent of the Misery Taxation (I.e. the boozing and pizza demolishing curbs a little). Sleep and physical health improve.
And then one day, while lying in the park and looking at the drifting clouds, while napping on the sofa, or indeed while sipping a coffee and reading the weekly emails of some slugabed stranger who lives half a world away you have an idea. An honest to goodness creative idea. It excites you. You want to pursue it.
And then, without a bucket of coffee or deafening music or the scream of a guru bellowing at you from a Silicon Valley stage, you get to work. Because you want to. Because pursuing the idea doesn’t feel like work.
You don’t care about the outcome, you just want to have fun doing the thing. And so you do.
And so with no expectations and no stress, with no received ideas weighing you down and with a thankful heart and actions that have signalled to yourself that you actually care about yourself, you begin. And under these circumstances you actually start to get somewhere.
And even if you don’t, you have received such a rebate on the previously ruinous Misery Tax rate that you now barely feel it at all.
A wonderfully unique take on the idea.
Brought to mind another Taleb quote "Only in recent history has “working hard” signaled pride rather than shame for lack of talent, finesse and, mostly, sprezzatura.” I've never really understood when I would hear people brag about how many hours they spent in the library studying, or working. Why spend 6 hours, when you could finish it in 2 and spend the rest of the time doing something worthwhile. For example, moving to a different corner of the library to read something more interesting.
I think "If you keep treating yourself as a slave, as someone unworthy of respect or care or love then this will manifest in your demeanour and actions and therefore your results." is a perfect sentence to explain the damaging effects of hustle culture. Something that a lot of people need to hear.
Another huge problem with the "movement" is that most of the time it encourages action above all else, and action without direction is completely ineffective. Most of us would be far better off taking the approach outlined further on: Chill out. Take some time to think and relax. Explore some ideas, without judgement or pressure, then when one feels right, go and do it. It won't take as much effort to do so when you do.
As much as the message is directed towards the creative types (which I would argue includes most successful entrepreneurs - a word that I now unfortunately have a truckload of negative connotations with thanks to twitter), I think it holds true for any worthwhile endeavor, even the pursuit of a big pile of f*ck you money.
Great piece all the same, looking forward to the next one.
Great article Tom. Funny when you think of it, but the business of misery tax (low qual entertainment, booze, pills, drugs, nightclubs etc.) can only evolve and develop as much as the "hustling"/success mentality also evolves. Because if you don't feel like you're missing out on something big, you don't need the crutch of the misery tax. 40 years ago, the average desk clerk didn't feel like his life was shit. He had a wife, couple kids, paid holidays and everything was OK, if not great. Nowadays, (a)social networks and a 24/7 orbital strike of success porn has changed that. So the misery tax also increased tenfold.
The irony is that the extroverted super-gurus of Twitter and SV talk about things they don't really understand; when they yell at you about motivation, keep in mind that they don't know what they're talking about, cause they've always been über-competitive and high-energy. Sure, they may have had a few lows, been dumped by their wife and lost a few companies on the way. But they've actually never had the mental construction of the people they're talking to. So they can only tell you what they "think" the process to unstuck yourself is. And usually, it's just motivation porn and shame-induced self-depreciation (thanks the US protestant ethos for that). If there's such a huge business of motivation nowadays, it is because like God and women, nobody can come up with a scientific irrefutable theory about it; so everyone "can" be right and from there, it just becomes a persuasion game. And guess what they're selling ? More of their own misery tax.
Willpower can only come from within, and it can only come from a rested and a clear mind which has time to wander and make its own conclusions. The solution is not to clutter it and replace the occasional beer with friends by a Jocko podcast marathon or a $2000 subscription to the mindset group of the latest guru. Anyway. I digress too much.