Working hard to make your wildest dreams come true is one thing. But glorifying overwork like it’s larger than life is another.
By the time you read this, I’m sure you’d presume this is the gazillionth article on a hot yet controversial buzzword. Everyone is talking about The Great Resignation (and rightfully so, will tackle that in a future blog) as well as side gigs, freelancing, and all that. However, this buzzword is something that hits right me in the feels — for the lack of a better term — as it is something I’ve longed to write about for a long time.
Let’s talk about hustle culture. How can we not forget about that?
The hustle culture is almost synonymous with any of these catchphrases: rise and grind, work hard and play hard. These are the same catchphrases you can just post and tag #MotivationalMonday on social media. Self-made entrepreneurs, startup evangelists, and big-shot business leaders do not take the stage without preaching how pivotal it is to be the hardest worker in the room if one wants to achieve success.
Don’t get me wrong, hard work is just as important to success. The problem is that hard work is often misinterpreted as working long hours and finishing deliverables at lightning speed. In other words, dedicate a significant chunk of your life to work above everything else.
All things considered, I find the hustle culture pretty troubling because of reasons I’ll elaborate on later.
Now before I get into the real deal, let us peek into a typical day of a creative in a startup living the hustler life.
AN AVERAGE DAY IN THE LIFE OF A HUSTLER, PROBABLY
Author’s Note: All events depicted in the next few paragraphs are entirely fictional. Any similarity to actual events is purely coincidental.
Meet The Creative Hustler. She’s been working in a social media and digital marketing role for three years at a shopping startup.
The day starts at 6:00 AM by checking emails and messages sent overnight by her clients and teammates. She gets up from bed a little later at 6:45 to dress up, grab a cup of dark roast coffee sprinkled with fortified milk, and boot up her laptop. When the clock strikes seven, she starts reading through the latest industry news while simultaneously checking on her startup’s social media analytics.
Morning is filled with team calls and revisions on the 3.3 social media plan. There is a lot of multitasking in-between content calendars, check-ins with different teams, and social monitoring. Creative Hustler, despite her tummy grumbling for a bite, keeps finetuning another social media plan for a campaign launch. She finally takes a break for a quick lunch at 2:00 PM.
Creative Hustler teeters between meetings, flooding comments, competitor scouting, and more brainstorming the entire afternoon. At 6:30 PM, she scarfs down her dinner of mashed potatoes and Nashville hot chicken while replying to a bevy of client emails from her freelance writing side gig. Yep.
Soon after that, Creative Hustler schedules a few more social media posts for the startup before ending work at 10:00 PM.
The day ends with either catching up on a zombie series on Netflix or mindlessly reading /r/Cringetopia. Creative Hustler goes to bed at midnight, and when the sun rises it’s just another day in the workroom.
IT’S OK TO TAKE A BREAK.
Creative Hustler is one of the many hustlers striving in today’s burnout generation. A time when the pressure gets individuals trucking until there is nothing left in the tank.
All this talk brought about the common behaviors of hustlers:
- Believes that weekends are for dweebs
- Works long hours as it correlates to maximum productivity
- Takes side gigs because if they’re not working enough, they question their existence
- Boasts about how they have endured sleepless nights just to produce their best work
- Floods social media feeds with photos of them gushing about how #workislife
As you can see in Creative Hustler’s story, work is a defining force in her life. That’s how hustling works — you grind until you are satisfied. You work to keep clients happy and to earn a hunch. Sometimes even if you achieve your goal, you want to aim higher because why not? You want to turn your passions into a potential business, so you freelance in your free time. You’re doing this partly in case later you want to resign so you can focus on your side gig. Sometimes you may not see the clock tick by as long as you are doing what you love.
However, there comes a time when we need to draw the line on glorifying hustle culture.
Hard work is fundamental, but that does not mean you have to dedicate your entire week to complete multiple tasks. You can create a magnum opus despite working for only four hours a day. In other words, don’t let work overrule your life as it is essential to leave some space for other facets — personal relationships, hobbies, self-care.
Before writing this post, I read this brilliant thinkpiece from brand strategist and storyteller Celinne Da Costa on why society needs to tone down its rife obsession with overwork. Here’s the most compelling portion that captures my thoughts exactly on the phenomenon:
In a world that is inundated with distractions, busy-ness, and addiction to hustling, there is merit in taking a step back and looking at the big picture.
What would life be like if you slowed down, just a little? If you took your time waking up, scheduled breaks for self-care, were fully present when you were with your loved ones, and made your working hours as productive and focused as possible so that you had less of them?
Sometimes it’s better to take one step backwards so you can take two steps forward, instead of incrementally plowing through life and being forced to slow down when you inevitably burn out.
“Stop Idolizing Hustle Culture And Do This Instead” by Celinne Da Costa, Forbes
I am going to sum this up quickly in my own words.
It’s OK to take a break from the daily grind every once in a while. There is no shame in taking regular 30-minute power naps when you feel exhausted from back-to-back meetings. Work is part of life — but not your whole life.
It’s OK to keep working hard. However, it is dangerous thinking if you equate that to multiple overtimes and no weekends. Instead, think of hard work as performing your tasks diligently while knowing and embracing your limitations.
It’s OK to not have a side hustle just to say that it keeps you productive during your downtime. I, myself, am not writing on weekends because I want to start my own publishing brand in five years. I write because I find it therapeutic. That’s not to say that I am against side hustles. It all comes down to your purpose. Whatever your hobbies are, enjoy it even if it does not guarantee to bring you coins.
Most of all, it’s OK to not go with the flow of hustle culture. Anyone who wants to sustain a good work-life balance should not be undermined for avoiding work talk on weekends. As my officemate said it best, work is NOT a life-and-death situation. It can wait.
NOTE: This post was previously published on my website.
