If you’re not constantly hustling for cash, you’re doing life wrong and don’t deserve to thrive. You are never allowed to stop the grind or enjoy the fruits of your labor.
This is hustle culture, and it’s destroying our lives.
What is Hustle Culture?
Hustle culture is the idea that you must constantly work, even beyond your normal job, to deserve good things in life.
You must work overtime, start a side hustle (or six), take on extra projects, and more. Your weekends should be dedicated to building a side business, and your evenings should be spent chasing more followers. Every connection is a networking opportunity for growing your brand or selling your products. Any money you make must be reinvested, because god forbid you enjoy something with your earnings.
If it sounds terrible, that’s because it is. Hustle culture is the insidious belief that if you aren’t working 24/7, you don’t deserve to be happy or be wealthy.
Some even take it so far as to say you don’t deserve to support yourself if you aren’t constantly hustling.
Why is Hustle Culture Toxic?
Hustle culture is a dangerous blend of ableism, misogyny, and unfettered capitalism. It’s the toxic message that living to work is the only way to live, a rebrand of ages-old propaganda designed to suck as much labor out of people as possible.
The Ableism and Misogyny in Hustle Culture
Ideas promoted in hustle culture ignore the realities of life. It tells us we must work 12+ hours per day, ignoring the millions of people who literally can’t (the disabled, for example). It also ignores the never-ending unpaid labor (such as childcare, home care, and elder care) that millions of people (primarily women) must accomplish to keep society running.
Once you notice the thinly veiled misogyny and ableism in these “I did it, so you can too,” messages claiming you don’t deserve to eat because you don’t work enough, you’ll never unsee it.
My favorite is the one that circles the interwebs every now and again, claiming that everyone has the same 24 hours in a day. While technically true, it ignores that people have different obligations.
A mother with small children can’t spend her evenings hustling. A father can, but only if he ignores his parenting duties (which seems to be a common theme among the guys who promote hustle culture). They may have “the same 24 hours,” but mom has no time for hustling.
Hustle Culture Normalizes Toxic Attitudes about Work
Chay_Tee via Shutterstock.com.
A second, more insidious reason why hustle culture is so toxic is that it sends the message that this is normal.
Hustle culture normalizes the idea that you must spend your entire waking life working to afford life. It normalizes prioritizing work over wellness and building relationships based on getting ahead. It normalizes the idea that people who don’t work 24/7 don’t deserve homes, food, medical care, or life.
It also normalizes a rejection of doing things for personal enjoyment.
The truth is that it’s not normal.
No human who works forty hours a week should be unable to afford to live. We shouldn’t have to try to monetize our hobbies just for a chance at survival.
Life should be for living. We should be allowed to enjoy things, experience things, and engage with the world around us without thinking about how we will benefit.
Life isn’t supposed to be one gigantic hustle. Relationships aren’t just about what you can get from the other person.
The idea that the only point of life is to work is disgusting and should be challenged regularly.
Hustle Culture Monetizes Every Aspect of Life
The third reason hustle culture is toxic is because it seeks to monetize every aspect of our lives. With hustle culture, there is no fun, only money. You have no relationships, only customers. There is no relaxing, only working.
People who buy into toxic hustle culture don’t do things they enjoy; they only focus on what might make a dollar.
But the worst part is how it destroys relationships and real human connection. When you’re constantly hustling, are you making friends, or are you just thinking about how you can use the other person? Are you connecting on a human level, or building brand relationships?
Our ability to connect with other people, show empathy, and build meaningful relationships based on mutual respect catapulted us to the top of the food chain. It helped us build civilization.
Hustle culture destroys all of that, stripping everything good from relationships and turning them into selfish means to an end.
When you approach every connection with an attitude of “what’s in it for me,” you’re rejecting the best and most fundamental aspect of humanity.
The monetization of everything, from the things you enjoy to every relationship you have, is one of the most toxic aspects of hustle culture.
Examples of Hustle Culture
If you don’t believe that hustle culture is real, just take a brief peek at any social media feed dedicated to money. There, you can find a constant barrage of how someone is better than you because they worked more.
I found these gems on the former “money Twitter.”
One of my favorites claims that anyone can be in the 1% in the US, and if you aren’t, it’s your own fault.
You need to make a million dollars a year to be in the top 1% of earners. How is that feasible for everyone?
Not only does this tweet promote the idea that you can only be successful if you make huge sacrifices (the cornerstone of Hustle Culture), but it also ignores the millions of working poor who work hard and sacrifice but still can’t get ahead.
The poverty trap keeps people stuck in endless cycles of debt, low-wage jobs, and strife. Stagnant wages and the high cost of education make it nearly impossible to dig out. But tell me again how the people who cut your grass, cook your food, stock your shelves, and care for your children don’t work hard.
To be a self-made millionaire, you shouldn’t even eat. All of your money should be invested. This is taking sacrifice to the next level.
The people who live to work, answering on the nights and weekends, are those who are successful. While this might be true, can’t the tweet’s author see the glaring issue with this?
People should be able to have lives and free time.
These tweets are just a tiny sample of hustle culture permeating our society.
You may have seen similar tweets or news stories about side hustles or in motivation threads on Instagram or Reddit.
Hustle culture surrounds us and constantly bombards us with the message that if we aren’t always working, it’s our fault that we are struggling.
I’m a Hustler….and I Hate the Culture
Look. I’m a hustler. I love blogging and gaming and always look for fun new ways to make money. Usually, I’m unsuccessful, but it’s a game for me. It’s fun.
I enjoy spending my free time writing for the blog and supporting the folks in my Discord.
I also do it because I want to quit my job and support myself with these side hustles someday, and because it’s fun.
Before starting, I knew it would take a few years of arduous work, and I accepted that. I knew I would need to sacrifice some things in the present to get the life that I wanted in the future. That was my choice, and I’m okay with it.
I also understand that not everyone will have the ability or desire to do what I’ve done (or am doing).
The Opportunity and the Desire
I’m incredibly privileged to have a job that pays the bills and gives me enough free time to pursue my passions. It’s given me tons of opportunities beyond my wildest dreams.
Millions of people don’t have that. Their jobs don’t pay them enough to survive, or they’re forced to work outrageous hours with little compensation. Some must work 2-3 jobs just to live.
We also need to discuss the millions of people who simply don’t want to hustle. They are happy working their forty hours per week so they can enjoy their free time. They’re perfectly content working until age 65, then retiring to a life of comfort and leisure – and that’s okay!
Everyone is different. Everyone has different goals and dreams, and aspirations. Nobody should have to hustle to get by.
Nobody.
Hustle culture sends the message that if you aren’t working your butt off seven days a week, you are to blame for a life of destitution.
How Can We Prevent Hustle Culture?
Hustle Culture is a social and political issue. People are hustling because they have to, and because they’re sold a dream that if they work hard for a period, they will be successful for the rest of their lives.
The Political Issues Behind Hustle Culture
Stagnant wages force people to hustle. After working eight hours at their primary job, they deliver food after hours just to get by. Then, because they toiled so hard to build some semblance of survival, they shame others who don’t want to work that much.
They also refuse to acknowledge the systemic problems rampant in our society that prevent millions of other people from even trying to hustle this way.
The Social Issues Behind Hustle Culture
American society has a weird obsession with work. We promote a toxic work culture in general, and hustle culture is a natural extension of the celebration of work above all else.
The idea that automation would create a world with more leisure time for all is lost on us. We value work for the sake of working.
Of course, a society organized around work as a value system will worship something like hustle culture. It takes the exaltation of work to the next level. We should always be working, and anyone who wants to stop and enjoy life deserves to be poor.
A Cultural Shift
We need a culture shift. Work isn’t something to be worshipped and valued – it’s a means to an end. Work to pay the bills and earn enough money to do what you enjoy.
Hustle culture tells people they are trapped in poverty because they didn’t try hard enough, which couldn’t be further from the truth.
We must also acknowledge and fix the problems that keep people trapped in a cycle of poverty. People aren’t poor because they don’t hustle enough; they’re poor because life costs too much. Healthcare, childcare, and education are unaffordable. Even necessities like housing and food are becoming budget busters, especially since wages haven’t risen to match inflation.
Many people with low incomes in America do work over 40 hours a week, but society doesn’t value their work, and thus they can barely afford the basics.
Proponents of hustle culture will shout “Get a better job,” to blame the victims of low wages, so society doesn’t have to do the hard work of investigating and fixing the real problem.
Avoid Hustle Culture in Your Personal Life
It’s far easier to avoid hustle culture on a personal level than to fix it on a societal level, and if that’s all you can do, it’s a great start. The secret to avoiding hustle culture in your personal life is to live a meaningful life.
No one ever said on their deathbed that they wished they had worked more, so don’t.
Instead, do what makes you happy.
Remove yourself from the culture that tells you that you need more and more to be happy because, after a certain point, more money doesn’t equate to more happiness.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with hustling. If you enjoy it, as I do, keep doing it! But stop shaming others for not doing or wanting the same thing. Acknowledge that others can’t do it, and vote to support programs and policies that will make their lives easier without the hustle.
Even if you enjoy the hustle, understanding that not everyone does and that it’s not normal to expect people to hustle just to survive will go a long way toward getting rid of the toxic parts of hustle culture.
Let’s End Hustle Culture
No one should have to work evenings and weekends just to survive. We should stop shaming people for trying to live their lives and promote a healthy work-life balance.
Life is for living, not for hustling, so let’s end this toxic idea that if you aren’t working every second, you deserve to be poor.
We can do better.
Wages are stagnant because of technology constantly progressing, companies trying to minimize labor costs, and a more interconnected world.
Agree! I put this on Twitter the other day:
“Like anything there should be a goal. I had a side hustle goal to get a full time job in a specific industry. It worked. Then a goal to find new business partners and that worked. But without a goal, you are aimlessly hustling!”
Aimlessly hustling to make money money money just doesn’t work. The hustle should have a specific goal. To save money, to FIRE, to put food on the table. Anything. Working 24/7 just because you can and it makes you more money. How is that helping YOU..in the long run.
Thanks for this post!
You’re so right. I think we are just obsessed with work sometimes. I wrote a separate post on that topic – because I think it’s insanse! We work for the sake of work – what kind of life is that??
I don’t mind hustling but I don’t like overly hustling. Some days, I just wanna snuggle up in bed and stare at the ceiling for two hours and do nothing and still feel good about myself afterwards.
The hustle culture has a way of shaming people who doesn’t work outside of their day job. Which, you should be working outside of their day job but if you don’t, that’s completely fine as well.
Yeah, I’m not a fan of shaming culture in general. Everything seems like a competition now a days, and people don’t want to let others just live their lives. It’s crazy.