How to Break Up with Hustle Culture
It’s no wonder we’re experiencing burnout when hustle culture creates a constant pressure to appear productive and perform work. Fuelled by technology, especially social media, hustle culture expects us to be on demand even when we’re not “at work”. How many of us are guilty of checking our emails during the weekend? Or posting promotional pieces on Linkedin way after hours? Not to mention the stream of self optimisation and productivity posts that seep into our lives through Instagram under hashtags like #hustlelife, #riseandgrind, and #TGIM (Thank God It’s Monday). This relentless online optimisation and promotion goes to show that it is not just “influencers” who have created a brand of themselves.
As work/life boundaries have blurred, our identities have become wrapped up with work, affecting our self esteem and distorting our sense of value. Hustle culture generates the misleading assumption that our value is only tied to the quality of work we produce, leading very often to burnout. The pandemic has further eroded a work-life balance for many people, reminding us of the urgent need to tackle burnout.
Hustle culture is also fuelled by our obsession with being busy. While some have re-evaluated this relationship over the course of the past year, it’s so easy to fall back into glorifying busyness. We seek to constantly optimise our time as we’re pressured into achieving goals by a certain age, focusing on imitating the narrative of success we see on social media. It’s time to re-evaluate our relationship between work and social media, and break up with hustle culture for good.
So how can we go about making changes?
Establish work boundaries 🚧
Establishing boundaries are important in every aspect of your life and work is no exception. Perhaps this looks like only checking your emails during office hours and disconnecting your work email and Slack from your phone. Perhaps you need to learn how to say no and communicate clearer. It’s important to check in with yourself, re-orientate your relationship to work and create healthy boundaries which will look different for everyone.
Revaluate relationship with social media 📵💻
Personally, I find taking time away from social media every so often really beneficial to my mental health. Whether you choose to do a digital detox regularly or just every once in a while, it’s important to be mindful of social media consumption and take a step back from the constant overload of information. Scheduling a set time to promote your work if necessary and sticking to that structure could be useful, as can turning off your notifications to limit the time spent checking for updates. Ultimately, you have to find what works best for you!
Redefine idea of success 🥅🥇
A key way of combating burnout is to shift our ideas of success away from impossible expectations, and towards more balanced, personal & less performative goals. Find value outside of work as well, as your value as a worker and value as a person don’t have to be interlinked. Reject the rush to achieve specific goals by a certain age, and instead embrace the timing of your life.
Rest 🛌💤
When I was growing up my family would constantly say “you’re not a machine”, as a reminder to slow down. I am typically ‘on the go’ and have often been guilty of a ‘work hard play hard’ attitude, leaving little time to rest and do nothing. To this day I am reminded of those words when on the verge of burnout. It’s so crucial to allow yourself to rest, to slow down and to stop glorifying being ‘busy’. Not only when on the verge of burnout, but as a continuous practice. As journalist, Pandora Sykes, says in her book How Do We Know We’re Doing It Right it’s time to ‘move from hustle to flow’.
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