Life Beyond Hustle

We live in a world where “content” is the new currency and although I’ll never argue the profound impact it has created on learning, perspectives and ‘self-help’ but I continue to see the damage path it creates. 

Of all the forms of toxic self-help out there, “hustle culture” is probably among the worst. 

Hustle culture — and all of its questionable offspring, including the “rise and grind” mindset, “motivation porn” and so-called “toil glamor” — is the ethos of constantly working your ass off in the pursuit of some vague goal, no matter the cost.

Whether it is work, sports or the daily grind of life – hustle is only attributive if it has direction, purpose and intent.  The “hustle” I’m about to describe is aimless self-loathing activity.

It’s a psychology, a philosophy, and an identity that glorifies nonstop labor, brute-force drive, and blind resilience — as well as the publicity of that effort, by constantly talking and posting about how damn hard you’re working.

But there’s also something undeniably seductive about this stuff.  For me, I was one of the bleeding disciples who believed that anyone who doesn’t devote their life to rising and grinding is scared, lazy, defective, entitled and/or unworthy of success.  So ignorant.

Because baked into hustle culture is the idea that it’s possible to rise up, break through, improve your situation, tap into a deeper purpose, and finally excel in all the ways you wish to excel.

This is a universal longing, and it’s a legitimate one — if, of course, getting ahead matters to you. To some people, it just doesn’t, and that’s perfectly okay.

According to the gospel of hustle, only those disciples who are willing to outwork everyone around them — usually because they’re dissatisfied and angry and terrified of not being special — will find true success.

More than that, those are the only people who deserve success.

And that’s the toxic belief at the heart of this movement. This idea that work = good, work = success, work = the only way to live a fulfilling life.

Which, of course, is patently BS. We all know that meaning comes from tons of things — work being just one of them — and that what people find fulfilling is highly personal.

But hustle culture “works” because it preys on a cluster of impulses — the hunger to succeed, the fear of failing, the desire to conform, the wish to be admired, the need to feel fulfilled — and promises to resolve them with one simple strategy: working your ass off.

Again, this was me, subordinating everything in my life to this pursuit of the grind and ultimately ending up experiencing Burnout. Resentment. Self-loathing. Alienation. Disillusionment. Directionlessness.

I certainly have not been alone in this while knowing so many people having experienced similar struggles, many still today.  Tragic.

They all talked about feeling further away from their goals, less connected to their purpose, and more resistant to growth — exactly the opposite of what hustle culture promises.

I hate it.

I believe there is a way to work hard toward our goals that doesn’t involve a toxic relationship with our careers, other people, and ourselves.

But first, we have to agree on a few ways as to why hustle culture can make you miserable…

It sells the destination, not the journey.

You’ll notice a few common themes in hustle videos within social media. People getting out of luxury cars or boarding private jets. People wearing fancy clothes and hanging in exotic locales. People looking cool and attractive or surrounded by cool and attractive friends, always the center of attention, always the star of their own movie.

There’s a reason that these hustle “gurus” feature this lavish lifestyle, and the reason is that they’re selling you The Dream. The Dream of becoming fabulously wealthy, powerful, important, popular, and independent. And the best way to sell The Dream is to sell you the destination.

Not the process. Not the journey. Not the mission. But the glorified end result.

By doing so, hustle scammers tap into the low-effort, high-reward mechanism of our lizard brains. They focus on the rewards and completely gloss over the sacrifice required to actually succeed at a high level. They know they have nothing to offer in that department. In fact, they know that acknowledging how hard the journey is would actually work against them. So instead, they dangle the fancy car, the sleek jet, or the huge house, to shift your focus to the end result.

In the process, they reinforce a toxic mindset that values the spoils over the journey — despite the fact that tons of science (and virtually every successful person’s experience) confirms that most of the joy in life comes from the process of doing something.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Material things can be fun. Nice house, Cool toys, exotic vacations, nice clothes — they’re a fun benefit of doing well in life.

But when those material assets become the point of the journey, then we’ve missed something crucial.

High performers don’t do what they do so they can fly to Aspen on a Gulfstream or drive around Berlin in a Bugatti. Most of them — the best ones, anyway — do what they do because they’re lit up by a mission they care about deeply.

Walt Disney famously said, “We don’t make movies to make money, we make money to make more movies.” That’s a very meaningful way to look at one’s work. But hustle bros can’t wrap their heads around that outlook. To them, anything worth doing is only worth doing for money, end of story. Passion, purpose, conviction — those are secondary, if they factor in at all.

It’s no surprise, then, that most people who get caught up in hustle culture eventually abandon their dreams. As soon as the destination feels impossible to reach — because they’re not in a strong relationship to the process itself — they eventually grow disillusioned and give up.

It teaches shortcuts, not skills.

Hustle gurus also tend to focus on hacks and techniques rather than knowledge and skills. Just as they sell the destination over the journey, they also focus on workarounds over work.

They do this, of course, because shortcuts are attractive to the primitive part of your brain. That part of you isn’t interested in becoming an expert or growing as a person. It gravitates to clever hacks and easy solutions, which hustle “scammers” know they can sell with much greater ease.

The irony, of course, is that hustle scammers simultaneously preach the value of hard work. Just not the kind of hard work that involves real substance. Hard work, in their view, is pure man hours and raw effort. It’s not about where you spend those hours, or how you direct that effort.

In their minds, you don’t just work hard to be successful; you become successful so you can keep working hard, because that’s the only source of value worth pursuing in life.

If you’re going to break your dependence on hustle content, you have to come back to your own values, standards, and expectations.

·        What do you believe is most important in life?

·        How do you want to spend your precious time?

·        What do you want to spend the fruits of your labor on?

·        Which goals, missions, and problems do you find inherently rewarding to work on?

·        Where in your life and career do you make the most impact?

·        How do you judge the value of your effort?

·        What would make you proud, content, and fulfilled?

Answer these questions, and you’ll start to create a system for yourself that is much more meaningful than whatever you might see in your thread.

Beyond Hustle

Good self-help equips you to navigate life’s challenges — not with endurance and faith, but with skills and purpose.

If it encourages you to increase your input, it’s not because it shames you into working harder, but because it empowers you to chase the goals you find inherently meaningful.

Most importantly, it doesn’t preach a system that pits you against other people in the pursuit of success. Instead, it puts you in touch with what you believe is most important in life — and helps you hold yourself to your own standards.

So if there’s one antidote to this whole toxic productivity culture, it’s probably the people you surround yourself with — and the quality of the relationships you form with them.

It’s only within these close relationships that we really become our best selves and do our best work. And it’s only by sharing our experiences with those people — experiences both good and bad — that we can find the lasting motivation to go after what we want. Not by chaining ourselves to our desks or running to second, third, and fourth jobs out of desperation, but by figuring out what really matters in life with other people who care about those values too — and drawing on those relationships to realize our goals.

High-quality self-help can be great. But strong, meaningful, intimate relationships — that’s where the magic really happens.