Introduction
You wake up when your alarm goes off. And Check your phone. After using the restroom, you recheck your phone again. Then, as you rush out the door and skim through emails, checking your phone again. you have breakfast while on the phone. You eat quickly in between meetings after you arrive at work. Even when you “complete” your work, it still follows you home. While watching Netflix and talking to your family, you continue to check and reply to emails. Despite all the blue light, you eventually get some sleep; and then repeat the process the next day.
In this article we will discuss Hustle Culture and its effects on our mental health. Many of us may suffer from these effects of hustle culture but don’t know how to cope with it.
Let’s begin by establishing.
What Hustle Culture is?
Hustle culture is a social convention one can only achieve by exerting excessive effort and pushing oneself to the limit. Social media supports the hustle culture, which has unreasonable expectations for output and purposeful labour. People undergo unneeded stress as a result of this societal expectation. As social status is correlated with the volume of work completed and fosters the disregard for having a personal life outside of work, it frequently results in burnout.
Hustle culture, which has its roots in behavioural psychology, employs an explicit operant conditioning reinforcement schedule, a technique through which people learn how to act to get rewards and avoid punishment.
Hustle culture employs a variable ratio schedule, the most effective of all reinforcement plans, by rewarding people after a random number of times (the same used in lottery games). Hustlers get dependent on these erratic benefits of success, which causes a thrill that motivates you to hold on until the subsequent victory—a decade after decade… of labor.
What does this Hustle Culture does to your body and mind?
Hustle culture puts the body in a condition of fight or flight by pressuring employees to adopt a “go hard or go home” mentality. Cortisol, the primary stress hormone, is released more often and in more significant concentrations due to this ongoing stress. The body must enter a state of rest to bring these increased cortisol levels back to normal. But what if the culture of hustling doesn’t allow for downtime? Burnout is thus unavoidable. This ongoing stress may harm your emotional and physical health. Chronically high cortisol levels have been linked to several adverse outcomes, including anxiety, depression, heart disease, and memory problems.
According to research, higher stress levels are associated with lower productivity at work. Instead of just adding to their burden, employees need to find personal fulfilment and conscientiousness to do outstanding work. Additionally, data have demonstrated a strong correlation between happiness and productivity. People are more productive when they are relaxed and less worried (for example, via taking social breaks). Therefore, hustling culture paradoxically reduces productivity by keeping employees under continual stress.
The hustle culture pushes you to create an imbalance in your life, where work takes over completely, and all other activities become meaningless. It motivates you to put quantity above the quality of work to the point that you lose sight of the goal you were pursuing in the first place.
This is the reality of a culture that exalts hustling too much.
You won’t understand that the things we’ve come to accept as usual are also the causes of our weariness and burnout unless you examine it from a microscopic perspective.
How to handle being trapped in hustle culture?
1) Start by being conscious
. You may alter and advance by being aware of if you are caught in the hustling culture loop. Do you feel drained and worn out? Possess no free time outside of work?
2) Recognize what is significant to you.
Clarify and document your objectives. Think for a moment. Are your goals in line with your “why”?
3) Describe the perfect day for you.
Plan how you may manage to attain your genuine priorities while taking care of your welfare once you have identified them. Make time in your schedule for the tasks you must complete for your work and wellness.
4) Allow your thoughts to roam.
You may prevent burnout by feeling more balanced and taking attentive microbreaks during your job.
5) Treat yourself now rather than later.
The tenet of hustle culture is that your efforts will eventually be rewarded. However, by setting boundaries for your schedule, you may break this pattern and treat yourself to activities that will increase your resilience and keep you from burning out.
6) Work hard, only then recharge.
Instead of viewing self-care as a reward that must be earned, practise self-compassion and love. If necessary, take a mental health day. Additionally, try these easy techniques if you are feeling anxious. Finally, discover strategies that will help you overcome obstacles.
Employees now identify mental health as the principal element in total worker wellness as COVID-19 highlights the truth of the mental health crisis. Leaders must recognize that organizational culture trends place mental health at the forefront. The hustle culture does not provide aid to employee wellness.
The culture of hustle doesn’t stop.
The culture of hustle doesn’t sleep.
Every day, hustle culture strives to make the most of the 1440 minutes, which gets very toxic.
Since there are 1440 minutes in a day, try to strike a balance between your job and personal life by taking some time to meditate, work out, or engage in a hobby you KNOW you will like. As a result, you’ll be more at ease, self-assured, and tough to work smarter, not harder. Additionally, it will be beneficial.
Conclusion
In today’s world of hustle culture, the grind of it has detrimental effects on our body, mind and emotional health, it leads to burnout, anxiety and depression. And in the long run all of it decreases the motivation to work and the production and quality of work.
To escape the toxic cycle of hustle culture, we must start by becoming more self-aware of when we’ve become trapped in that mindset. From there, we can redefine what we want, set boundaries, and intentionally schedule our time for some leisure activities and self-care. Working hard is important, but we must also resist the idea that we can only treat ourselves after putting in an unhealthy amount of grinding first.