It's not just your job.
It's the whole system.
And there's this whole mindset and
toxic work culture that is everywhere.
That has been celebrated and accepted.
Like it's totally normal.
Aand subscribing to these toxic work culture
beliefs
is not only making you miserable at work,
even if you're not in a toxic job,
it might be stalling your career and
leading to career burnout.
And that's why in today's video, I am taking down
these five toxic work behaviors.
If you're here for the takedown,
tap that like button and let's jump straight into
it.
The first toxic work culture behavior that has
been totally adopted and even glorified is hustle
culture. You know that preaching about working all
the time. Like, how is this even a thing that
people think is cool? Other than it's the only way
that they feel like they're important have some
culture means that you're working all the time
that you're always on an interprets working hard
as working in the moves hours, because you're
supposed to be working 60 hours a week, have your
life together in a way that makes you the envy of
all of Instagram and be doing self care while you
hustle. It's all very contradictory. And it's a
one way ticket to burnout. And the funniest thing
about hustle culture and when someone brags about
working 80 hours a week is that it tells me you're
not productive. One of my favorite studies to talk
about comes from Stanford, and they looked at
productivity at work. And what they found is
hat after 55 hours a week, your productivity re
lly starts to tank. And after 70 hours a week
it really just falls off a cliff. So when you wor
80 hours a week, it's like you're working 55 hou
s a week and 55 hours a week is way too much. And
the ultimate gotcha about hustle culture in pract
ce, especially from what I've seen in the sta
tup world is that it's highly performative is tha
it really means that you're sitting around in
the office doing not work. I can't tell you how
any people I have seen that spend 12 hours a
day hustling every day, they're watching YouT
be, sorry, if I'm calling you out. But you're not
working 12 or 16 hours a day, if you're not
working productively, you're just actually wasting
time at work and taking away from your life and
burning yourself out in the process. So all of thi
waking up at 5am and working 14 hours a day in
rder to prove the fact that you're important. Can
we just call it what it is through the toxic AF
tamp, on it and start living a more balanced life
This is actually one I'd love to hear
your thoughts on in the comments down below.
The second toxic work behavior that is just part
of the working culture that we really need to take
down is actually it's kind of derived from the
hustle culture thing, but it's different and toxic
in different ways.
And that is no days off.
I can't tell you how many people that I've spoken
to that have bragged I haven't taken a vacation
and like five years, you need a week off joke's on
you. I just took a month off and it was awesome.
But you win the burn Olympics, my friend would you
like a medal. This whole taking a vacation is
weakness or that you're not serious or you're not
determined if you take a vacation is just utter
rubbish that I cannot stand and who doesn't serve
when you don't take your paid time off. And we
haven't done this for a while. So let's break out
and JB TV quiz to figure out who not taking
vacation serves for the lucrative prize of a
virtual fist bump. Tell me who does not taking a
vacation serve yourself, your family and friends
or your company. If you said your company, your
right virtual facepalm coming your way. When
you're always there, when you're always answering
emails, when you're always going to the meetings
when you're always working on the projects, when
you're always billable. When you're always
whatever that is not serving you to not have a
break, it is not good for you to go an extended
period of time without time off. I know working
remotely from a different location doesn't really
count because you're still working. And this is
actually I think one of the downsides right now
with so many people working remotely or going into
a hybrid model as a returning into the office is
that it's like, oh, you need a day off. Like you
can just work from home and BD, right. So whether
it's a sick day, or a vacation that you need to
take there is all this pressure to always be
online and never actually take a vacation
compounded by the fact that it's a totally
separate round and maybe a separate video about
the fact that not everyone gets paid time off,
which is just crazy. To me. This is nuts. This is
not okay. Because there are so many benefits to
taking time off and having a vacation. Even if
it's a small one every year, you're going to have
less stress. There's a whole host of health
benefits that I'm going to put on the screen
there. Yes, you're just going to have more energy
when you come back into the office so you'll be
more effective at your actual job. Now when I
posted it about vacation a couple weeks ago on my
community tab here on YouTube, a lot of people
said that they were afraid to take a job they
wouldn't have a job to come back to.
And that actually leads me to my third toxic work
culture behavior that pretty much everyone has
accepted as normal. And that is top down
leadership or I am the boss of you will respect
Maya authority like, what the EFF? Is that?
Honestly? Are you in handled with that mentality?
Are you tired? Because it seems really immature to
me. Now, most organizations still do function this
way where decisions are made at the very tippy
top, and then they trickle down through the
organization. And then people are just paid to
execute upon what they're told and not have any
autonomous thoughts that vary from what the leader
said. But is that effective? And is that
empowering? And is that a healthy workplace? In my
opinion, it is toxic AF to have this structure
where all decisions are made at the top and that
employees across all levels of the organization
are not empowered to make decisions or to question
decisions that are being made. And while I'm
personally lucky, because I come from the tech
world, which tends to run a little bit more flat
and a little bit more autonomous, yes, still run
into it. There are example, here's a dramatized
version of a conversation that I had with one tech
executive, you have to respect me, I'm an
executive and my job title, it's higher than
yours, you have to respect me, because you report
to me, do I? Here's the thing in all of the
corporate politics and the toxic work culture, and
all of the games that we play, to pretend that
other people are more important than we are, no
one is more important than anyone sure they might
be higher up the ladder, they might have a fancy
job title, and they might get paid a lot more
money than you. But just because those things are
true does not mean that they should have any more
respect than you and that you have to respect them
when they're not giving you any respect or that
you should value them when they don't value you.
And really, I think that type of leadership where
leadership is coming through job titles, and
hierarchy is actually just insecure leadership and
practice. Because real leaders want their teams to
be smarter, they want their teams to be more
talented, and they want their teams to be
empowered to go and do the jobs that they're being
paid to do. And if you want to dig in about
insecure leaders, I have a whole video that I'll
link in the description bar down below. And this
next toxic work culture behavior thing, I honestly
think that this is the worst one because this one
can have such a detrimental impact to your life
and to your well being. And that is that work
always comes first. And honestly, we see this all
the time. Even those companies that are out there
preaching about the fact that family comes first
expect you to answer calls and emails after hours,
work extra time, when it serves them, it's
necessary for the business and put the needs of
the company before your own needs. And here's
where I get really irked about this misperception
that if work doesn't come first, all of the time
that you aren't fully committed, that you aren't
determined that you aren't ambitious, when in
fact, you can be all of those things. But work
doesn't have to come first all the time. Maybe
sometimes work does need to come first. Because
there is a real actual urgency. But really work is
a social construct, just like everything. And it's
all things that were pretending to be important
that actually on your deathbed won't matter at
all. I used to be the worst about this work came
before most things in my life for way too long.
And it all came to a head when I was pregnant,
grieving and pretty ill and I tried to go on a
business trip, which resulted in me being
dramatically deplaned when it became a medical
emergency before takeoff, which at the time was
equally parts traumatic and embarrassing. So why
would I sick, pregnant and deep in a grief hole,
get onto an airplane to go on a business trip
because I was afraid that my boss would think that
I didn't take my job seriously, and that I wasn't
committed to the company and that they would be
mad that I missed the trip. And to be honest, in
retrospect, I don't think they would have thought
any of those things. And I don't think they would
have been mad about it. Because they weren't even
though it got to the point of the dramatic de
planning. But I think even without that, that they
still wouldn't have been mad. And while I think
this whole work coming first is really challenging
for everyone. I actually think that working
parents take a particular Brunt here working moms
are forced to have to choose workforce to show
that they still actually care about their jobs
that are not just going to run off and become stay
at home moms, which is what sadly a lot of people
assume about them, and working dads face judgment
about their masculinity if
they take a day off to take care of a sick kid. I
mean, there's that saying not we should work to
live not live to work. And as much as we say it
all the time. It's not something that enough
people are practicing. And that brings me into the
fifth toxic work culture that we really need to
dismantle, take down burden to the ground. And I
think that this is the most important one. So I'm
really glad that you stay to watch this point.
Because if you only take one thing from this
video, it should be this you are not your job.
Somehow toxic work culture has constructed it that
our identity is based in what we do. Think about
it. When you go to a happy hour or a dinner party.
One of the first things that people ask you is
what do you do for work? Not only are we being
reduced down to our job titles, so we are deriving
our identity, our validation and our significance
from the thing that we do for work, I would argue
to a good extent as well how much we You get paid
because your job title on how much you get paid
for doing the job that you do. There's so much
about you in today's society. And I think that is
one of the most toxic things about work culture
today. I'm truly I think that everyone's job is
really important. Each of us are playing a
fundamental role in order to keep our society
moving and to support our communities in some way.
Are there differences in terms of skill,
education, training, and knowledge and physical
capacity for those? Of course there are, but I
don't think that anyone is more or less important
for being a doctor than they are for being a
delivery driver. Okay, slight detour there. When
our identity is built on the thing that we do,
what happens if you decide to change your career
or if you lose your job, and I'm telling you guys,
this from personal experience, my identity was in
my job when my job went away. I was like, Who am I
and I don't want you to go through this. And
really, I think that this is a fundamental shift
that so many of us really need to make, because
you're not just your job. You're a family member,
a friend, a community member, a career bestie, and
so much more. Your job should be a part of who you
are, but it isn't who you are fully, life is not
work. And work is not light. In fact, that is so
important that I want you guys to go to my
Instagram and I'm going to put that post up, I'm
going to make a nice image for you to take a
screenshot to remind yourself when you need it.
Because I really want you to figure out who you
are outside of work and who you are outside of
your career. I don't want you to prioritize those
things equally, because they are all part of your
awesome self. Now I know this can be really hard,
especially when we combine them with other toxic
work culture, things like hustle culture, and
we're coming first and if that's the thing that
you're hitting, as we're talking today, I actually
have a bonus for you because I do think that this
is possible with work life boundaries. So if
you've been hanging out with me for a while, you
know my next statement work life balance is
bullshit. It literally does not exist work is
going to take up whatever space in your life and
your head space that you allow it to have. So no
you don't need to figure out work life balance in
order to have different areas of your life and
have an individual identity outside of work. You
need work life boundaries and this is something
that is so important. What I want you to do is go
and watch this video right now where I break down
the work life boundaries that you really need but
before you go if this video helped you give it a
thumbs up really helps my channel make see my
favorite career bestie and I appreciate that so
much as always my friend thank you so much for
watching. I will see you in the next video. Bye
for now.