I don’t want to hustle. I don’t wish to live my life running after some elusive goal. This hustle culture of working longer hours, never satisfied, always wanting more and sermonising from the pulpit of social media, wherein everyone wants to be a founder or a CEO, feels abnormal. Look around. You’ll see what I mean. Every Tom, Dick or Harry is a Founder. Your job should be your life is the message plastered everywhere. Everyone claims to be the best in everything. Everyone wants to bombard you with life lessons. Everyone seems to be having philosophical conversations with the Uber driver or the Swiggy guy! The world has become a preaching lectern.

Everywhere you turn, the message is you are not doing it right till you hustle.

You are being told of the utmost need to wake up at 5 am because you are wasting your life if you don’t? Everything you have been doing so far has been wrong is the signal conveyed at the drop of the hat. Everyone is an expert on how you need to live your life, and it has hustle at the core of it. How to be extraordinary because there is no space for the average or the mundane. How you always need to have a side hustle. How the fact that you have a somewhat secure 9 to 5 job is unfashionable. How 9 to 5 is unfashionable unless it is 9 to 9 or even more. How wishing for certainty is not cool. Everywhere you turn, the message is you are not doing it right till you hustle. I do not subscribe to any of these thought processes. I don’t want to hustle. I don’t want to be a guest in my life, living only in the fleeting moments between the hustle.

Hustle culture promotes unrealistic expectations of work.

I find contentment seductive. I respect all those who are brave enough to be labelled ‘average’, not because there are no goals, but because they choose to be human about achieving them. I don’t want to be on a hamster wheel all my life. I like the quiet confidence that comes with comprehending life is more important than a designation. I find it charming when someone understands that everyone doesn’t have to be a founder. 

I Don’t Want to Hustle

Mind you, I’m not talking about money or saying one doesn’t need to work hard. Everybody needs to and should work. Also, I know how important money is. But I respect people who appreciate how much is enough and how much of a trade-off is worth more. Also, bonus points to those who do not preach.

I don’t want to hustle because I find the entire concept of hustling hollow and the people fake. They often walk around with plugged-in earpods as if they are Avengers saving the world but with the soul of dementors sucking everything positive that life should actually be about. People who work hard but also respect boundaries do not need to pontificate about it using megaphones. And longer hours certainly don’t mean better work. Quiet confidence and unostentatious demeanour are qualities worth more than loud cockiness. I find accepting one’s vulnerabilities alluring. Also, I don’t want to be rushing perpetually through life.

 

Work-life imbalance is not something to be celebrated.

Hustle culture promotes unrealistic expectations of work. It is when utopian expectations of working 70 hours a week without being adequately compensated for it and with generous doses of jingoism come into play. I don’t want to end up a wraith to fill someone else’s coffers, either. I like the freedom that comes with this realisation. I abhor this toxic mindset of hustle culture. The fact that it advocates sacrificing the self, taking on stress and romanticizing this as the ideal dream, resulting in burnout should, in fact, put us off it forever. 

Hustle culture frowns on taking time off, on vacations and logging off on time. It promotes long working hours. It penalizes you for having a family. It judges you for honouring your own time. It celebrates living to work philosophy. It celebrates putting everything else on the back burner, family, health and rest. It puts you on an accelerated path to burnout and mental health issues. And if you bow out, you are replaced without a second thought. So, why give this harmful thought process that power?

I’m not too fond of hustle culture because I don’t find anything humane in it. Hustle culture and living don’t go hand in hand. Work-life imbalance is not something to be celebrated. Setting boundaries is good. Choosing yourself over anxiety is something that should be the norm.

Hustle is a never-ending cycle of wants where nothing is enough, and you keep giving more and more of yourself while forgetting to live.

When I think about it, the word hustle always has an obnoxious connotation attached to it, in my mind at least. I’m on board working hard, but hustle adds toxicity to it. Hustle, for me, leaves no room to be human and all that entails being human. So, it doesn’t work in the long run.

I don’t want to be on a hamster wheel all my life.

I also don’t think hustle makes you the one everyone should emulate. It makes you sick. It takes you away from all that is important in your life. Also, it is worth remembering that working hard doesn’t mean working without a break. Working hard and being sincere doesn’t mean working longer hours. Hustle is a never-ending cycle of wants where nothing is enough, and you keep giving more and more of yourself while forgetting to live. And despite all that, you remain replaceable and forgettable. So, choose wisely.

They say, “You hustle, doing the things you do not like, to be able to do the things you like eventually“. But when do you get off once you are onboard the hustle train? Do you ever get off?

Think about it.

Ciao.