I’ve heard it described in a lot of ways.
Hyper-market.
Running 24/7.
Burning the candle at both ends.
Staying “covered up.”
Most recently, however, I heard someone referring to their “hustle culture.”
My mind instantly began remixing Dolly Parton’s seemingly antiquated hit “9 to 5.”
It as though, nowadays, a more accurate version would go a little like…
“Working 5 to 9. Always working, hardly living.”
Now, please don’t get me wrong. I’m all about hard work. And…I’m all for being rewarded for it.
My peeve with the idea of hustle culture is how quickly we’ve allowed it to overwhelm our lives.
We, as a society, have reached an almost inability to detach from our professional lives. We’ve gone from a state of ambition and pursuit of success to a general need for “busy-ness.”
Growing up on a farm, I know how difficult it is to leave work at work. Crops and livestock don’t exactly understand clocking-in and -out for the day.
And COVID certainly didn’t help matters. The onset of hustle culture was already present but the ‘rona came along and escalated the whole concept.
When working from home became more common across the nation (and world), our phones and e-mail notifications stayed on around the clock. The lines between business life and home life became significantly more blurred
If we aren’t careful, this can be detrimental to us and those around us.
Constant, nonstop hustle can magnify our stresses, limit our time and connection with those we love, and diminish our ability to participate in things that would normally bring us joy.
Hustle culture might be good for our wallets.
But truly living is good for our soul.
No matter your career or profession, we have to get back to some sort of equilibrium in our lives. We need to set some guardrails in our schedules and regain control of our work-life balance.
If you’ve stumbled upon this, I hope you’ll use it as a reminder to do some inventory on your own life and allocation of time. Think about your relationship with work and how it’s impacting your relationships with others and yourself.
It might be time for a little break from all that hustle.
