Self-help Gurus Et Al Day Dreamers: Introducing the Strugglers

 “I will start working from tomorrow-for real”. This is the rote sentence people have heard and said over and over. I have been saying this for the past fifteen years now and I will continue saying this because I identify as a struggler (noun) Definition:  A struggler (not to be confused with a hustler) is a person who constantly struggles between minimum work, procrastination, following self-help content and escaping with day dreaming. Synonym: common man, pun intended.

A couple of years ago, after I faced a lot of productivity loss in my work hours, I got compelled to start reading self-help (not working, only reading-a step 1 to self-improvement journey if you will). My agenda was not result driven. It was more about achieving that magical moment when I will finally know all the rules and I will get to it. It was something like “I have had so much theory that I am bound to do the practical stuff now”. Wrong! This is how it went: I read over 30+ self-help books, highly recommended by self-help gurus, academics, publishers and avid readers interested in improving their day to day habits and lives. Strugglers like me, want to either read, learn and implement or listen to audio machine’s motivational music playlist and be all high on the videos chanting “there is a lion inside of all of you!”  And you don’t believe it because honestly you only relate to the cat inside of you. Still it manages to pump you up. You strike down a power pose or break into a dance step and you say to yourself that you will end up doing stuff, important stuff! VIP stuff! That will make you sit in helicopters and look down upon people waving at you and chanting your name. At this crucial moment when you return from the fiery and blissful agenda, you realize you need to work and you suck at it. You decide to turn your life around….by streaming YouTube.

All books repeat the same mantra: habit construction/deconstruction, dopamine release and rat’s finding their way out, setting time frames like 5 seconds rule or first 20 hours or 4-hour week and creating a deep work flow and introducing a unique agenda of being a little bit selfish yet altruistic. Strugglers love to learn all about it via YouTube and self-help books. After all, they have to show people they are trying. Some self-help books are like a capitalist market toolkit: you got the motivational spirit to become a corporate slave? You need to gain that rat spirit from these over-achiever influencers on YouTube and some tag-line self-help literature. And also don’t forget the mug printed on with your favorite character because Hollywood tried their level best to market it as a symbol of relatable stuff to strugglers like us. It’s crucial to note that the merchandise is more important than the actual message of heroism. You also went for the cool red and golden helmet coffee mug rather than following the hard work protagonist placed in building that ironman suit. The struggler does all the setting work first : get the stationary, get the perfect study desk chair, get the best pen, book, paper, stapler, eraser, notebook, highlighter, sticky notes , timer, lo-fi study music … the only thing which is left is to get to work. By the time all this preparation is done, they are exhausted.

Dreamers love to dream. Reality has to be escaped with a vision of a beautiful utopian world where they are the heroes bringing world order and peace. In a struggler’s head her hero works 24/7, reads a lot of books, rides a bike, climbs mountains, takes a catwalk on a Paris runway and then simultaneously she also heads the NATO defense center and somehow ends up becoming Carmen Sandiago being chased by Interpol all around the world. This part is a motivation for a typical struggle. This is what makes them full of energy and hope. Without this, they will not become ambitious, they will not create goals and creative solutions. Without this day dreaming, they will not escape reality and end up wasting study time imagining the utopian world and getting average grades. In return, those average grades will lead them to wake up one day and work hard. This Daydreamer-Self-help-struggler is a paradox we are all caught in, except maybe Karl Marx, Immanuel Kant and Benjamin Franklin because apparently they were robots sent from the future to guide us for a better future! They were never caught up in this vicious vortex. They were never the strugglers. Thank God.