In today’s highly competitive world, hustle culture has become the norm. On paper, hustle
culture seems good and all but in practice it can be quite dangerous. This video will
go over what hustle culture is and my thoughts on whether it is a good thing or not. I hope
this video will spark some discussions on hustle culture so be sure to leave a comment
with your thoughts on the matter. So what is hustle culture anyway? Hustle culture
is all about constantly working. Those who believe in hustle culture try to devote as
many hours as possible to working or hustling. Work is meant to be done everywhere, not just
the office since we have the tools to work anywhere we want. Hustle culture is a lifestyle
and it’s celebrated by a lot of people including companies. One of the most famous advocates
for hustle culture is Elon Musk. Everyone knows how many hours he puts in working each
week and he believes that people who want to make a difference in the world need to
work more. “There are way easier places to work, but nobody ever changed the world
on 40 hours a week.” The reason why people believe in hustle culture and grind like crazy
is because it usually results in climbing the corporate ladder faster or getting the
results you want faster in your business. Studies have shown that more working time
has a positive correlation with higher corporate position. That sounds good and all but the
study also showed that their mental health and sleep quality got worse. Although following
hustle culture might get you the results you want here’s why I think it isn’t as good
as it seems. First off, hustle culture is not as productive
as it seems. In theory, working for lots of hours might seem like it will get you a lot
of results but in reality, things are different. Hustle culture focuses on quantity over quality
and it promotes getting as many things done as possible instead of focusing on the quality
of the work. I always believed in working smarter rather than harder and that focusing
on the quality of your work will yield better results than just putting in hours non stop.
There’s also this thing called the law of diminishing returns that shows why working
more isn’t always the answer. The law of diminishing returns states that at some point
the benefits gained is less than the amount of energy invested. At some point, working
more won’t help you get the results you want. Also, as mentioned before, studies have
shown that working too much hurts your mental health so if you keep working with that kind
of mental health, the quality of the work you output is going to be terrible. I strongly
believe that you are better off working smarter rather than harder.
Second, hustle culture hurts your physical health as well. When you spend all that time
working, you won’t have that much time to exercise. A lack of physical activity can
lead to many major health conditions which will make you unable to continue working.
Worse case scenario, working too much can lead to death. If you don’t think overworking
is that bad then you should look at Japan. People in Japan work like crazy and some of
them overwork themselves to death. Other people have even killed themselves due to the stress
of working too many hours. Working is good and you need to put in work but don’t overdo
it and take care of yourself. Third, hustle culture doesn’t allow you
freedom to think about other things. Hustle culture makes you obsess over work like crazy.
When you are grinding like crazy, your only focus is on work. You start to neglect other
things like spending time with friends and family or spending time on your hobbies. Everyone
knows that if you enjoy your work then it isn’t really work but when you spend way
too much time on something then it starts becoming less and less fun. Since you don’t
have the freedom to think about other things, your only focus is on work which might start
feeling like a drag. When you are in that position, life just doesn’t seem fun anymore.
The key to living a good life in my opinion is a good work life balance but when you are
on the hustle culture grind then there is no work life balance. Life is all about work
when you are living the hustle culture lifestyle and based on my experience, it isn’t fun
or fulfilling. You need some time in your life for other things that are important besides
work. Finally, hustle culture kills creative work.
Constant work creates a dull and monotonous environment. There’s no way you can come
up with any creative ideas or breakthrough ideas in that kind of environment. You might
say your work doesn’t require creativity but that simply isn’t true. Whenever some
problem comes up, you have to solve it and deal with the issue. Your approach to solve
that problem stems from your creativity. If your mind is in good condition, you can come
up with a good effective solution but if you are not in the best condition, you might come
up with a terrible solution that might make things even worse. Creativity drives development
and growth and you need to have time off so your creative juices can get flowing.
Like I said before this video is meant to spark discussion. I’m not trying to say
that you shouldn't work hard. In fact, you need to work hard to get the results you want.
You're not going to get a promotion by doing nothing. Hustling is important but taking
care of yourself is even more important. If you don’t take care of yourself, you won’t
even have the opportunity to hustle and grind so what’s the point.
If you enjoyed this video and want more content on productivity, check out the video about
productivity tips shown on the end screen below.