Are you Hustling or Simply Giving in to the Hustle Culture?
On Hustle Culture, Performative Work and A Good Life
Call me a hypocrite, but I do detest the Hustle Culture. Yes, I know what you are going to say - I work at an investment bank, an institution that not only enables, but also feeds off of this culture. But working in this environment allows me to experience this lifestyle personally and through the people around me. What I have seen makes me question our relationship with work.
What is the Hustle Culture?
Based on its definition, to “hustle” means to be in a state of constant activity. Now, the “Hustle Culture” that has become popular over the last few years takes this notion of hustling to an extreme and glorifies it as a lifestyle. It is a lifestyle in which one is constantly working, prioritising their professional life over their health and personal relationships.
There are three main points that come to mind when I think about Hustle Culture:
Professional progress: In a way, working more enables us to become more passionate about the work we are doing and in turn lead to new ideas, progress in the workplace and increased benefits (either monetary or personal).
Choosing work over personal life: However, most times it takes a dangerous turn where working hard leads to the deterioration of your physical and mental health, causing you to burn out. It places greater emphasis on professional progress rather than on your personal life and relationships. As such, the hustle mentality often leads to people choosing work over friends and family.
Performative workaholism: Finally, working hard does not always mean working smart. A lot of times, what looks like hustle could actually just be action faking or performative workaholism. As such, this leads to deep, quality work being compromised for shallow work that is used to simply fill up our time.
The Difference between “Hustling” and “Hustle Culture”
At its core, I think the Hustle Culture is an effort to create a better life for ourselves. Prioritising work for a particular period of time is not a bad thing - it allows you immerse yourself in your field, expand your professional mindset and create new opportunities for yourself. For young adults right out of university, I believe this mentality can help you find your place in society. And more generally, having a side-hustle (a term used to describe your second job/hobby that you pick up on top of your full-time job) provides an additional source of income and a source of joy that not everyone is lucky enough to get from their full-time jobs.
I don’t thing hustling - a temporary sprint in our work life to achieve a goal - is a problem. However, I do believe that the Hustle Culture is a problem as it encourages us constantly run a marathon without any breaks. I understand that this lifestyle can suit certain people (think Harvey Specter from the TV show Suits), but it is not sustainable for most of us. We require a good balance of work and life to be happy.
The problem with the Hustle Culture is that it tries to convince us that the only way to be successful and happy is by constantly working. And if you ask for a break - it would mean that you are not fit for that kind of work. In fact, job insecurity this is one of the reasons why so many people have accepted long working hours as a norm. This is something that doesn’t sit right with me as it actually reflects a serious failure of our economy if well educated adults are struggling to find jobs and make ends meet. But that is a problem to discuss in another newsletter.
The Social and Psychological Need for Hustle
I suppose, on one hand, we can simply blame our capitalist economy for enabling us to work long hours to keep up with rising prices, or to pay off debt. We can also blame the meritocracy in most societies for convincing us that, as long as you work hard and gain merit, you can achieve whatever you want.
But on the other hand, I can also blame us - working constantly but without any real, productive output - for succumbing to to this culture unknowingly.
Social media plays a big part in enabling the Hustle Culture. When we see our peers constantly working, building their side-businesses, taking up multiple hobbies and activities, we feel left behind. Hence, we jump on the hustle train to start our own side-business, or take up a new hobby so that we too can share Instagram stories with #RiseAndGrind, #EverydayWe’reHustling.
This is an excerpt from a poem I wrote during my final year of university, when I truly, unknowingly, gave in to this culture:
I often wonder what for we succumb
To the gears of a clockwork life?
Constantly moving, turning, churning at our bones.
I often wonder if I have begun to enjoy it.
The mind is a silly thing, easily impressionable ,
Convincing us that we know what we want,
Based on what we see and hear,
Not always on what we know.
And this brings us back to my favourite topic - intentionality. The Hustle Culture can breed unintentional mindsets. It is so easy for us to get lost in following what everyone else is doing and forget what you want to be doing.
Action Faking, Performative Workaholism and Deep Work
Being a student of Economics, some of my favourite terms are efficiency, productivity, and law of diminishing marginal returns. I am a firm believer in working smart more than working hard because it is the more efficient way to work. The number of hours you put into work matter less; what you accomplish in those hours matter more. Are you working effectively if you are taking more time to complete the tasks on hand? There is always a point where adding an extra hour of work is not going to create a pivotal difference in your output - so what is the point?
I recently read Deep Work, another book by Cal Newport (my last newsletter was on Digital Minimalism by the same author, you can read it here). Here is what he writes about Deep Work:
“Deep Work: Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.”
Essentially, Newport explains that the ability work deeply has become rare and valuable in our economy. It is deep work that ultimately creates and adds value to society. I will further discuss this concept in my next newsletter, but for now, lets get back to the Hustle Culture.
I worry that being lost in the Hustle Culture can lead us to compromise deep work for shallow work that is a result of performative workaholism. As this article accurately explains - “performative workaholism is a compulsion to work incessantly that is intended to elicit a reaction [from society]. It is a a signal to others to show just how productive and busy we are because society has determined that if you are not constantly working, then you are lazy.”
The line between actually loving your work and performative workaholism is very thin. Performative workaholism leads to us clocking in more hours but not deriving any real joy or value from it. It places emphasis on the act of working but not on our productive work ethic. We need to reassess the way we work and reset our minds to thinking of work as a tool for a good life, rather than thinking of a good life as being one surrounded by work.
A Good Life
Finally, as we reach the end of this article, I want us to think about what really is a good life? I encourage you to watch this Ted Talk where Robert Waldinger discusses the results of one of the longest studies of adult life. The study has been going on for 75 years and it analyses the lives of men and women from their late teens into old age. The research has a clear message: good relationships keep us happier and healthier. Although the subjects started off (as young adults) stating that what mattered to them was “money, fame and working hard”, as they got older, they changed their answers to, “good quality relationships”.
I suppose what I want us to take away from this article is that work is not everything. Furthermore, shallow work that is not creating any value is even more meaningless. So maybe we should take a step back to reassess the way we work and ask ourselves these questions:
Are we hustling with a purpose, or simply giving in to Hustle Culture?
Are we partaking in deep, or shallow work?
Are we compromising on our personal relationships and health for work?
It is time to find the sweet spot between quiet-quitting and the great resignation; it is time for us to prioritise balance. Because in the long-term, that is what matters, isn’t it?
Thank you for reading! As always, do reach out to me with your thoughts, I always appreciate it. If you want to catch up over a coffee, feel free to use this link (it helps notify me because I am not very responsive on social media) and we can plan a meet-up: https://calendly.com/nikitavattas/adventure-time
Yours truly,
Nikita Vattas
Kikki Bites, Vol. III
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