Why I no longer subscribe to hustle culture

If there is one thing I know for sure, it’s that life goes on even after death, loss, and global pandemics. It’s this strange experience that comes with grief and mourning, for many of us the last two years the focus has been on the mourning of a life that we all knew, that felt a little less unpredictable and a little less anxiety ridden. It’s this realization that life keeps on moving, the sun rises and sets each day, and that we as human beings have this wild capacity to adjust and adapt, and there is often a choice to be made around how we’ll show up, how we’ll work through the day to either make the most of it and all the cliche sayings of seizing the day and taking the bull by the horns.

I don’t know about you, but seizing the day has kind of lost it’s sparkle and most days diving into simple pleasures, being grateful for quiet moments, space for reflection and me time has won over my heart and my mind more than ever before. I am a recovering workaholic, a person who has rethought her purpose and most importantly her relationship with hustle culture. I preface all this by saying I don’t know that the Capricorn in me will ever be ok with coasting or simply being happy with a status quo existence. I think it’s innate in me to want to use my life for purpose, for impact and work hard to do that, but the pandemic and deep personal loss in the last 2 years has changed the way I look at work, it’s fundamentally changed my desire to be ok with the productivity paradox and the consequences like burnout, stress, anxiety, and personal self-limiting beliefs around imposter syndrome which had me living far too long in my own head. It’s shifted how I look at success and perhaps you too can relate. 

In an article published by the Guardian this past month titled “Workplaces are in denial over how much Americans have changed” American author Alvin Chang speaks to the writings of Yale historian Frank Snowden and his 2019 publication of the book “Epidemics and Society: From the Black Death to the Present,” which looks at the ways in which epidemics hold up a “mirror” to the social, cultural, and political conditions in which they arise. He speaks to Snowden’s perspective that “Epidemic diseases reach into the deepest levels of the human psyche. They pose the ultimate questions about death, about mortality: what is life for? What is our relationship with God? Alvin goes on further to say, “Many of us have drastically changed. It’s not just our attitudes toward work and life, but also that our bodies are reacting differently to trauma, stress and even love. I might argue that the reaction that Alvin speaks to is perhaps more of an awakening to the ways in which trauma and stress eat away at our health and well being, the pandemic brought that to the forefront in a way nothing else has come close to doing for many North Americans. The tragedies of the last two years have woken us up from our work-obsessed culture. Many of us have realized it’s OK for work to be merely a paycheck – a way to buy enough freedom to spend our time how we’d really like. Perhaps that means taking better care of ourselves or those around us. Others may want more meaning in their work – for the world to be in a slightly better place after we’ve worked 40 hours. And if America can’t support these desires, we’ve realized that it’s not because we’re broken; it’s because America is.”

I bring this into the conversation as a sort of validation moment for all of us who are experiencing this collective rethought process – in the post pandemic world or for those of us that are still paying attention, in the ongoing pandemic state that we are still in. It’s a moment to say, it’s not you, it’s them. It’s not a moment of giving in rather it’s a reframe, a realization that the ways in which corporations and society seem to merely forget the collective global trauma we are continuing to experience with a hyper rapid push to get back to quote on quote normal doesn’t have to sit well with you. If your relationship to work and hustle culture has changed to the extent that you no longer wish to opt in, you’re not alone and you can thank the pandemic for bringing your life into focus.

What’s in front of you is quite the journey though. And it’s an interesting state that likely hasn’t or won’t come without some internal conflict. The process you go through to think again is often bout with reconciling the old you with the new you. I think what’s ahead of you is more meaning coupled with learning to embrace simplicity, with boundaries coupled with the always evolving relationship many of us have with saying no and reprioritizing, what’s ahead of you is perhaps career progression that may slow down but a way in which you show up to your career with a work smarter for something other than only padding your bank account, no longer the work harder at all cost mentality to advance the collective capitalistic mentality that only serves to exploit the marginalized, which FYI you likely are. Perhaps you also too like James Baldwin, no longer dream of labour, at least not in the same way you’ve been programmed to.

So how do you come to terms with this internal conflict to reconcile this shift and transition the mindset easier and quicker, to think again and unlearn the likely connection you have with work and self-worth? The validation from success, from finding impact and seeing visible signs of winning in environments that are built on white supremacy aka not for women that look like us, that are built on the tenants of white cultural norms, for many of us women, as Black, Indigenous and women of colour, removing that traditional North American tenant of success is a complex journey.

I have been on that journey opting in as an early part of the great resignation. I won’t go into laborious detail on it because I’ve done so in previous episodes, but it taught me so, so much and continues to teach me so, so much. I dream of a future life that is fully characterised by purpose, impact, opting out of the corporate grind, one where my character, kindness and the ways in which I use my talents to serve something other than solely my own bottom line are the first things people notice about me. I don’t dream of labour in the context of building other people's dreams or bottomline. I dream of labour that births my own vision, that is defined by empowering and building other people up, of challenging our notions of what great workplaces should look like. Perhaps your dream is one where you like your job enough, can see your job as a vehicle to do more of what you love outside of work, where your identity isn’t baked in your career status and choices and that balance means a life well lived. 

And I’ve got a tangled history with success that has been deeply rooted in redefining myself for myself, outside of other people's expectations of what I was capable of doing. I’m a person who found success and alignment in my work to my talents later in life, a late bloomer of sorts that has in essence reinvented myself. From a quiet observer who was called shy as other people’s attempts to understand me and box me in to now someone whose side hustle has me doing a lot of public speaking. From a young woman who entered college at the ripe age of 17 without a plan, any direction and who almost failed obtaining her undergrad due to multiple failed attempts at a required stats course to a woman who maintained a 4.0 GPA in grad school. From a child of Pakistani immigrants who watched her parents struggle to make ends meet and keep up with everyone around them to a now 6 figure earner with an primarily peaceful relationship to money and a sense of success further rooted in things no one can ever take away from me. In essence, my relationship to conventional markers of success is most certainly complicated and I’ve had to come to terms with the part of myself that pursued all those titles and money, likely in an effort to validate my sense of self worth above all else. 

And something changed in me last year, primarily in May 2021 when I unexpectedly lost my dad. It was a sort of acceleration and revalidation of the direction I was already going in from the start of 2020. Losing the anchor of your family will do that to a person, a core shaking experience that makes you rethink your purpose in life. I’ve done a lot of reflecting on my journey and I have a lot of musings on reconciling what I thought I wanted for nearly 40  years of my life to what I now actually know I need.

First, a really big part of the process is embracing surrender to get to a space of acceptance in coming to terms with this newfound relationship with work and your perhaps dare I say a more evolved definition of success. You have years of programming to unlearn and the idea that it will be simple and easy to fully integrate into your life is shortsighted and likely quite harmful. Self compassion and giving yourself grace to unlearn that relationship between work, accomplishment and self value is a necessary part of the journey. You must unlearn your likely natural guilt-ridden response that comes from not expending all waking hours in what the New York Times calls the “Cathedral of Perpetual Hustle '' and that simply takes time and intentionally meeting yourself where you’re at.

It also requires consistent reminders that your life is more than your pay cheque, more than your title and more than how high you climb on the corporate ladder. Reminders that you are disposable to any company are harsh but necessary and when you rather channel all that energy from trying to impress “the man” to rather trying to leave an imprint on the world that is rooted in your natural talents and capabilities, the things you will be remembered for when you’re 90 or when you’re long gone are going to be rooted in your character, impact and how you made the world better for being in it. That doesn’t require the same level of hustle mentality that you’ve been taught is the recipe for success. That requires accepting that you don’t have to opt into that. If you needed any reminders of this, write this one perspective down from Jonathan Crawford, a San Francisco-based entrepreneur “I try to keep in mind that if I dropped dead tomorrow, all of my acrylic workplace awards would be in the trash the next day, and my job would be posted in the paper before my obituary.”

There may also be a pervasive fear of missing out that has underpinned your innate desire to rise in the ranks in the traditional ways. That creeps up when you pop onto LinkedIn and see your network seemingly thriving with new opportunities, promotions and success or when you log onto Instagram and see your feed littered with the one up crowd showing highlight reels of their lives, their abundance and wealth. It’s easy to get caught up in a comparison game that leaves you questioning your choices to opt out of the same grind, but it’s helpful to remind yourself that with every promotion, every new tax bracket and every additional move up the ladder of conventional success comes choices and sacrifices that you may not be privy to understanding or seeing. That kind of success comes at a cost, sometimes hidden, sometimes that shows up later in life. 

I think it also helps so much to surround yourself with people that inspire you not because of what they have accumulated or even what they have achieved, but by how they think. Surrounding yourself with dreamers and people who have bigger ideas of what the world is missing and how to solve for it keeps you in a state of thinking big, of creative expression and of possibilities that aren’t attached to someone else’s idea of your worth, of your value or your capabilities. Keep grounded in the way people think, in their ability to help you see things differently so you never lose sight of being inspired by people that are more than their opting into something you no longer wish to subscribe to. It’s easier than you imagine too, there is so much content accessible online that inspiration is only a google search away, literally.

I say all this to remind you that you’re not alone. If the pandemic changed the way you look at work, if loss or death has also done that for you, I’m with you there and here to remind you that it’s ok. You don’t have to dream of labour in the same ways. You don’t have to opt into a grind that leaves you exhausted and anxious. You can find success on your terms. I hope you found some hope and possibilities in this conversation.