As if compelled by unseen forces — one imagines that scene in The Exorcist — my fellow traveller adjusts his AirPods, straightens his spine, and “locks in”. Before him lies the cluttered still life of Productivity™: a crumpled FT, a bottle of protein-infused kefir, and two boiled eggs sweating inside their polypropylene coffin. For several moments, he sits with priestly solemnity. Then, as the train inches forward, so does he.
And so, begins his morning recital. I would call it theatre, but theatre requires even the slightest concession to its audience. There is no risk of such grace here.
“Jenny? You still there? Jenny? Excellent.”
He repeats her name as though invoking the supernatural. Dale Carnegie once advised this rigmarole; it’s meant to build something called rapport. Unfortunately, Dale Carnegie never sat captive before a disciple who had taken his gospels quite so literally.
“Jenny (build rapport), could you run those numbers by me again? (assert authority). I’m hoping to parallel-path with you moving forward (signal tribal membership). Great! (convey enthusiasm). Jenny, let’s circle back at 1400 GMT; I want to put a pin into an area of emerging awareness.”
By this point in the sermon, I’d developed several areas of emerging resentment and the unignorable desire to drive pins into eardrums — mostly mine. His monologue, which suggested he charged by the word, stretched unabated from Reading to London Paddington, where he skulked off the platform and into the neon vomit of the city like a Roman senator descending into the Suburra.
In the false refuge of a nearby pub, the missionaries gather and gab incessantly. Chirruping clots of earnest twenty-somethings discuss REM-centric sleep regimes, dopamine stacking, and some Santeria called “sunlight dosing”. They sip protein-riddled IPAs. They recite “Huberman says …” as the devout once invoked St Augustine.
These rituals — the 21st-century Lascaux cave paintings — serve one purpose: to peacock one’s devotion to a deity known as The Grind. Like all deities, The Grind demands a daily sacrifice for a distant, mostly hypothetical reward.
We have struggled to name this social pathology. Grind culture. Hustle culture. 996. No days off. Whatever it is, it is not working. In truth, it is the inbred relation of Performative Reading — Performative Working. This theatre drips with all the fripperies of work and none of the results. Much like a Hinge premium account, or indeed the British state.
Christopher Gage, “Mourning Routine: The Cult of Performative Work”, Oxford Sour, 2025-12-03.
March 7, 2026
QotD: Grind culture and performative working
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