Do you just love the buzz of being over-caffeinated? Or is it just the smell of freshly printed paper that just gives you life? Or do you enjoy checking your work emails at 6am before even getting out of bed to see the onslaught of emails from your boss (who clearly doesn’t sleep) giving you 20 extra tasks to add to your to-do list?
I’ve had numerous conversations in every workplace I’ve been in that people don’t seem to know when to stop working.
“Sometimes I just fall asleep on the couch, looking at papers for work, at like 3am,” A friend said to me and to which I recoiled, shocked at the idea of taking your work home.
“I worked on that report for 8 hours on that bank holiday,” A colleague smiled. I tried to understand the concept of working on a day of annual leave, as I sipped my 3rd coffee and trying to wake my face up to not look appalled. Maybe it was just me who could see the weird expectations to work harder that were everywhere.
For a long time we’ve been telling everyone they’re fine. Just get a job, get a house, have a family and grow old. You’re going to be fine, everyone has done this before and now you’re here so in the grand scheme, you’ll be totally fine.
With new generations rejecting the traditional working environments that the previous generations still promote, it is not a surprise that a new working culture has emerged. People are finding new sources of income, becoming digital nomads, and being creatively independent. This is a great example to be setting for the future but what has been more concerning has been the rise of the ‘hustle’… something that was born out of a really nice sentiment but with the 24 hour content overload it has turned sour quickly.
Stories of offices and companies sticking up neon signs declaring the hustle culture’s mottos of the month have spread across the world. People have decided that hustling is the only way to get through the endless years of working that we have ahead. The workaholic culture that seems to now permeate every start up, company, and organisation, is slowly overwhelming everyone. We’re encouraged to view every possible opportunity as the big break — even the ones with no pay, or future prospects. Every interaction is a doorway to the next big thing and all we have to do is push hard enough against that door to get to the other side. Yet most ‘doors’ are actually walls and most people don’t want to be viewed as an opportunity but as people.
So what is a ‘hustle’?
Well, according to Urban Dictionary, it means “To have the courage, confidence, self belief, and self-determination to go out there and work it out until you find the opportunities you want in life.”
YouTube provides a range of examples of this overwhelming problem in action. I can recount numerous YouTubers having to apologise or take breaks from the social media platform because the constant expectation to produce content (on every social media channel) is sucking the life out of their life. Young people can attain success, money and fame through social media outlets like YouTube. It does come at a price.
Once you’ve had a whiff of success, the plan is to work harder and harder to gain more, and more followers. Just keep going. Keep firing out content. Be online 24/7. Comment, like, tweet, and engage with your following even when you’re not posting a video. YouTube encourages the ‘hustle’ culture. If you post more often, post longer and have a lot of engagement, you will be rewarded with on the featured page, or with advert revenue or sponsorship. I should add that advert revenue has been impacted of recent, as well as copyright issues becoming more frequent, and YouTube is getting stricter on who can be monetised.
It’s not just in social media that this is an evident issue. In July 2018, Gallup found that 23% of the US full-time workers, involved in their study of 7,500 people, were suffering from burnout. Another study by Gallup also found that only 60% of people knew what was expected of them in their role… that’s a big 40% who do not know what is expected of them in their job — that they go to nearly everyday!
Other research has found that being overly passionate about your career can be destructive as well. Being obsessively passionate about your role can lead to higher chances of burnout and a conflict between your work life and other life activities like seeing your friends. Caring about your job and obsessing are two very different things and when we start to think that obsessive behaviour is the norm it creates an imbalance in job expectations, lifestyles, and stress levels.
Let’s put it this way, at your normal 9 to 5, if it’s expected that you work more hours than you are contracted for AND it’s not paid, then why are you doing it? To get ahead? If everyone is doing it then it doesn’t provide any advantage for you to mess up your own work-life balance. Seriously, why is something you’re not paid to do become a necessity in your daily life? Taking work home with you is doing more harm than good and believing that just one more email will suddenly mean you have achieved something is idiotic because there will always be another email, another meeting, another pile of paperwork, another customer, another sale... There will always be something else.
All that stuff will still exist and not to be morbid, it will still exist after you’re no longer on this earth. When you grow old, you won’t remember the all nighter you pulled to finish a project that was going to be fine either way or that time you sat on a train journey home finishing up your emails. You’ll remember the times you spent with people where you laughed, you enjoyed yourself, you helped someone else, you created a connection… You live when you’re in the moment and with other people, not hunched over a desk or stood behind a till. I’m sure you’re not going to look back at your life and think “oh, I wish I had done just one more report!” or “I wish I had served one more customer!”
Not to be morbid, this will all still exist when you die so why are you killing yourself now for it? Just live.
