Since when did workaholism become a badge of honor? I ask myself, because I, too, am part of the hustle culture.
This is the current trend... no, it is definitely not just a trend. It has become a brand of this generation of young professionals who invest their youth in pursuing excellence for a brighter future. That's a poetic way to rephrase "thinking that working longer hours means productivity".
I was raised in a very competitive environment, which made me develop an unconventional attraction to stress, pressure, grind, and everything masochist. So when I joined the workforce, I brought that trait with me. I have an eight-hour job, but I experienced working up to sixteen hours a day for straight months, including weekends and holidays. Some have it harsher. It's a nature of my job, but after two years and some online courses about time management, it crossed my mind, is it really "nature", or is it just tradition?
For instance, "learning curve" is pinned on the concept that a learner's efficiency improves and time consumed lessens as he gains experience through repetition. Basically, as one worker gets more experience, he becomes quicker to respond to challenges and to finish a job. Of course in real life, there is (or should be) always something new to learn even if the situations repeat—otherwise, the monotony will also bore the employee. But, all other things held constant, we can finish a project a lot faster than we would have done a year ago. But because of that "savings" in time, we tend to look for more work, or people would put us more work, which is not automatically causal to the amount of income we receive. We learn, we save time, we fill the gap. Then, aren't we just stuck in a chamber, always repeating the cycle until we burst off hot?
Here is a visual representation. A college graduate is like a balloon. She prances through the doors of a corporate office and gets accepted to an eight-hour office job. She works hard, and actually aims to work harder than everybody else. Even if doesn't become irreplaceable to the company, she still gained a damn huge amount of professional growth and experience. All those efforts to keep expanding her reached has made her really, really big. Now, get back to the balloon. The balloon is huge, but thin. It has stretched beyond its normal capacity and is nearing its limit. When for some reason the air inside it dies off, the balloon looks wilted and awkward. The remaining air atoms frantically run off everywhere inside the balloon to fill up space like what matter is supposed to do.
That awkward state of the balloon represents our existential crisis. Air inside the balloon died off by a natural death, but a considerable portion remains alive, and confused. The air atoms in the undersaturated balloon roams around bumping the balloon walls, seeking to fill the void, giving us inner unrest, agitation, irritability, anxiety, thirst or confusion.
Seeing that awkward balloon, a bystander can pump up additional air into the balloon to make it return to how it was. The bystander has the tendency to fill it as big as it was before, because the bystander thinks that that size is the balloon's normal. This is when we receive more work even though we are already done with work we are supposed to have... because we look empty and we seem to be able to take up more. Our representation (the balloon) is an inanimate thing, but if it were alive, we also have a tendency to take up more work ourselves (not other people giving it), in order to fill up that void that we created through expanding ourselves.
By pumping the second time and retesting the limits, the balloon gets closer and closer to its death. Sometimes, the balloon just bursts out unannounced. We cry when we have had enough. Do you recognize that pattern in which we continue to absorb stress while complaining, but we don't stop even if we technically (as human beings with full functionality) can, and then we just suddenly cry, not knowing who to blame, just an unexplained feeling of regret and aimlessness?
There is also a chance that the bystander just lives the role—bystanding. Just letting the balloon sit on the floor. Just letting the remaining air atoms die off, too. Just letting the damn balloon wilt off in a slow, agonizing self-reduction. Compare the balloon when it was fresh from the package and when it has died off. Compare the employee when she was fresh from college and when she has burned out. Consider the difference, even aesthetically, even at the most shallow physical surface.
Of course, this is not to push the blame to the surrounding people. It just happened that our representation is a balloon which is an inanimate thing. But a person can inflict that slow death unto herself as well, by blind acceptance, overhopefulness, bottling emotions, and personal choices to bear the pain alone.
When we want to reuse a balloon in a future party, what do we do? We untie the balloon and release the air inside it. That way, the pressure is released altogether, and balloon's atoms find their way to reassemble themselves like the compact rubber they are. That way, we can preserve the balloon's deflated shape.
I don't know about you, but I keep balloons as memorabilia of some events of my life, such as when my friends surprised me on my 18th birthday. Also, one can argue, "why reuse when we can just buy again." That's not eco-friendly, either. Balloons are cheap, unlike people. When a balloon's shape gets old, we can always buy a new one, although it's bad for the environment. For people, yeah we can also replace but should we? It's even worse for the environment. Just because something can be replaced doesn't mean we should not even try to repair or pull them back to motivation.
Don't get me wrong—working hard is important. Just as much as working smart. Working hard to meet our current goals, to put food on the table, to prepare for our long-term dreams. Even side-hustling is cool. Remember when we used to take part-time jobs during our free time in college because we want to prepare ourselves for the workforce. We want to get firsthand experience of facing people, seeing the supply chain, learning business etiquette, as much as earning side income for our overwhelming college needs. As much as work, school or any kind of activity inspires you and makes you stronger, the hustle is worth the hassle.
Working hard is not the same as working difficultly. Our activities should be value-adding to us. They should motivate us and get us moving towards stability and satisfaction. When the warmth from our activities that embrace us starts to become a jacket of thorns, we should take a moment to evaluate why. Maybe we are not working "hard" anymore. Maybe we are starting to fall out of our way. Maybe we need to breathe and reboot, just like how we use Task Manager to force-end and re-run Excel when it crashes, rather than endure in hope that things will get better soon.
So when the hustle feels suffocating, when the hustle doesn't inspire you, and on top of not inspiring you it actually degenerates you, that's when you need to pull back from the hustle culture. When the hustle makes you feel guilty of taking a break just because everybody else is still working, all the more reason you need to take a break. Ask yourself—is this the culture you want to spend your youth with, which will get embedded to your personality?
And, let's normalize limits. "Limit" is not necessarily a bad thing. Let's stop connoting limit as "weakness for achieving only as much". It's not about "not expanding your comfort zone" or being afraid to take risks or not striving hard to "rise to the top". Limit simply implies that something has a start and an end. Limit is actually intelligent, because we know that things should not be mixed up. Limit minimizes confusion. Limit preserves our inner peace.
I haven't lived enough to know when exactly the hustle culture started, or if it's really our generation who popularized this. Anyway, in any generation, past or future, pushing your limits also has its limits.
We all have our one life each, so live it, not just "consume" it. Hustling is supposed to keep us active, not stagnant. It's nice to invest our youth into productive activities. If we are so absorbed in "preparing for the future", make sure that that future stays existent, and that we are still alive and enthusiastic when we meet that future we are working so hard for.
Whether we want to be a parent someday, or to marry our profession, or to do something else after taking experience from our present activities, we should prioritize ourselves. Does this activity add value to me? Does this endeavor inspire me? Does this busyness build me rather than destroy me? The hustle culture is just a concept—it is up to the community to interpret it to their lives. Don't let it be a ritual, a black hole we cannot escape.
Take time to evaluate yourself—are you becoming a slave to the hustle culture, or are you leveraging it to prepare for your future?
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