Is Hustle Culture Toxic?

Let me get to the point for my people who are busy.

(ahem, you).

Hustle culture is killing you. All that "no pain no gain," "rise and grind," "you can sleep when you're dead" is actually going to ensure that you suffer. Now listen, hustling has it's place. You literally have to hustle when you are first starting because you have to build momentum and front load a lot of the work to build systems and frameworks and to get started. This is not an article that is against hustling when you need to. This is an article against hustling because you're afraid to allow ease and flow.

Studies show that Americans workers left a record number of vacation days on the table last year — 55 percent of Americans did not use all of their paid vacation time. 

Read that again. 55% of Americans did not use all their vacation time. Which, by the way, the United States already starts with the least amount of time in the world. So not only do Americans start out with the fewest vacation days, more than half of us aren't even using all of it! Even better, you'll notice that the US actually has zero days of annual leave, which means that its not against the law in the US for a company to not offer paid time off (except for National Holidays) at all.

And yet, here more than half of us are, not even using all the time off we do have.

Y'all, those stats are bananas! The vast majority of Americans are literally giving their LIVES to companies who will post a job opening before they post their obituary. Now, I know America values #hustle and #grind and #nodaysoff and #deathculture but there are so many serious consequences to over-working and not taking enough down time. Humans evolved to do work, but not to work and be "on" all the time, and there are serious consequences to hustling to the point of burnout. So the short answer is yes, hustle culture is toxic and will lead to burnout if you don't learn how to build supportive systems, lean into taking care of yourself and be intentional about taking care of yourself.

I invite you to examine your relationship with hard work, hustling and being busy. If you find that you're feeling pressure more often than you are taking time to enjoy the fruits of your labor, perhaps you're in a period where you would benefit from taking a few steps back and lean into activities that energize you and help rejuvenate you.

If you want some help with that, check out my podcast episode about what it takes to actually be happy.