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Hey, everyone, how's it going? My name is Mayuko.
Andw elcome back to my channel where we talk about tech career and life
on another episode of Mayuko talks about stuff that's been on her mind for a while after working in tech,
but didn't even really know how to talk about it or even what was really bothering her. But now it's really starting to pour out of her.
We're gonna talk about my experience working in tech and content creation. And its relation to hustle culture.
Hustle culture and tech industry feel kind of synonymous to me. Like by working in tech, you are hustling. Also, as a YouTuber,
I feel like it's pretty common for there to be some sort of hustling element to it too. And what I mean hustling or
hustling culture, I'm talking about overworking yourself or your job or making money. Basically pushing yourself past your
limits to reach this sort of capitalist utopia or evolve version of human that doesn't need to eat or sleep or something.
And like me, Mayuko at 20 years old, realize that I don't really prescribe to hustle culture. And let me tell you why.
There was a time when I tried prescribing to hustle culture, especially when I was working at a startup,
I had a daily three hour commute, and I was trying to optimize all of my time at work, and otherwise to not only get shit done,
but I guess to hustle. But then like the panic attacks came,
I first I thought it was just like one off instances of panic. But after months and years of therapy,
I now realize that through the panic attacks, my brain was sending me warning signals and
putting my brain into a state of just like, Oh my gosh, I'm literally dying right now, because that's what panic attacks feel like.
And I think it had a lot to do with the fact that I wasn't really truly taking care of myself,
like hustling to me means that you're ignoring some basic structures of balance between work and not work.
And my panic attacks were a result of that balance being way off, aka, I was not only investing too much time,
but also too much energy in my work. So yeah, now I can see that my own personal balance has to be much better than
what I was doing. So I thought a lot about how I got there in adopting hustle culture and why it's so common
and hyped up in the worlds that I was living in. Like, what is hustle culture, even for it promises is sort of
utopia that we're I guess trying to reach in which our whole self is defined by the work we do.
And that's the mark we leave on this planet, not just versus society, but for ourselves and future generations.
People also talk about getting out of the rat race, but like, is doing so actually going to bring happiness.
And to that I say yeah, for some probably for some folks, hustle culture, whether they define it as that or not,
is how they've oriented their whole life to be around slash about when I tried to adopt hustle culture.
I thought that by hustling, my life was more purposeful it had like a framework to live by. And I also have like a
reason to live and to go up and get out of bed every morning. But kind of like how I mentioned in my
previous video, I feel like I then started to interpret it as if I'm not hustling then I'm without a defined
reason and purpose to live. So I don't deserve to be happy or just to exist or achieve my dreams. Which
that's some harmful self talk. You know, I mean, being Japanese and America. I feel like I'm from two cultures
that glamorize the f*** out of hustling and working hard. And from what I've seen from both cultures about
hustling and working hard. It just felt like their definition of happiness or life purpose didn't really
align with mine. I just realized that it's just like not really what I aspire to or want to achieve,
especially now that I'm older and know myself better. Now, to go deeper. I feel like part of hustle culture
is to make yourself some sort of work machine. And in this effort to automate and optimize your life, there's
this need to quantify results like the need to literally measure everything, everything from the
amount of hours that you've worked in the ounces of water you've had to the amount of sleep you get a night
and I think that's because In order to optimize your life, you need to like measure the current state first,
I guess, I see the stark parallel in the tech industry where companies and tech people are constantly
measuring things like, are we hitting our metrics? Did we accomplish enough story points this sprint? Is there
a product slash company growing quickly enough? How many people were using this feature? And is it driving
up engagement? Even in the content creation world, there's also this sense of needing to measure
quantitative results to verify legitimacy. Did enough people watch my videos? Did enough people click
through? Is that click through rate high enough? Do I have enough subscribers, I mean, measuring quantifiable
results is great in that it helps to make sense of the ambiguity in a world where no one really knows what
they're doing. And we're all kind of making it up as we go. And make sure that we're headed towards the right
direction, allows us to easily share context with others and gives us something to work towards. But in
reflecting on all this, I thought we'll reaching some quantifiable goal really gives me the life or career
that I want. Because if I had to look back on my work as a software engineering content creator, the stuff
that I remember the stuff that matters, the stuff that really made me feel glad about choosing this path is
the qualitative stuff. Each individual story y'all send me about your life and what role my content has played.
Every person I was able to meet and work with in the process of creating something. At the end of the day,
when it comes to quantitative insights, I'm not going to ignore it completely. Being able to track data that
way is a really useful tool in doing business in the 21st century. I mean, after all, I do need to keep tabs
on whether people are actually using or watching my stuff. But if I had to balance out which side was more
important to me, it would be the qualitative stuff. It's a working progress as I challenges position and
notion that I've brought with me from the tech industry into my work as a content creator. But I'm constantly
reminding myself that it's the qualitative stuff and that more isn't necessarily better, its quality, its
thoughtfulness, its intentionality that makes good and I don't know, I guess this position just feels very
counterculture to hustle culture, where a lot of it is about maxing ourselves out like machines. I said in my
previous video, that we as a whole human being are not just our work. And our worth isn't slash shouldn't be
calculated by the things we create. Because we all inherently deserve to exist and be happy regardless of
those things. Instead, I'm choosing to look at my life based on a lot of things like did I eat something good
today? Did I rest well do I feel like I did good work today that moves me towards the future that I want that
I give everything a solid try, everybody's different. And I definitely acknowledge the huge amount of
privilege I have in being able to live this way. And people will just choose to live however they want based
on who they are and what their circumstances are, and that's fine, but this is who I am. And you know, I'm
gonna live my life in a way that matters to me. Thanks so much for watching. Hope you enjoyed the video. First
of all, make sure to preorder your CODE hoodie I hope you enjoyed them. This video was inspired by a
conversation I had as a guest on a podcast called the "Work Item" so I'll leave the full episode link in the
description box down below.
Make sure you subscribe for more musings but tech career in life from me and I'll see you next time.