Anti-Hustle Culture and the Need for Attention
This narrative around hustle culture is played. It has been for years. And the anti-hustle culture commentators have become triter and more idiotic than the stuff they claim to be speaking out against.
1-minute 30-second read
Hustle culture is one of those topics that isn’t actually a thing anymore. But people still write anti-hustle culture posts because they’re a surefire audience hack.
Honestly, I’m not convinced that hustle culture ever was a thing. At least not at scale. More on that in a sec.
These stop-glamourizing-success-type posts are usually coming from consultants, telling you to stop selling your soul in exchange for professional gain. Real rah-rah stuff.
This puts the audience in the position of not being able to disagree, and therefore, likely to click a thoughtless Like while doom scrolling the feed.
It’s a pathetic move rooted in desperation for attention.
That said, we’ve never really lived in this hustle culture type of world. It became exaggerated when startup culture and social media collided. Suddenly work ethic and long hours were made public. Then spawned a new industry of online influencers. Then we slapped a label on what this level of work ethic means. And here we are.
Here’s the reality: The very few who have this high-drive switch turned on will always have it on. It’s how they’re wired. And TBH, 1% of that 1% will build the next generation of industry-changing products and services. And we will use these products, love them, and praise their founders. It’s how we roll as a society.
The rest of us who make up the remaining 99.9% are smart enough to know what work-life integration means. The most passionate of us go through periods of time where we lose perspective, work a little too much to get something over the finish line, recalibrate, go hang with our friends/family, get outside, work less, and repeat. It's a cycle.
It’s called life as a grown-up who works for money to support our lives (and the lives of others).
This narrative around hustle culture is played. It has been for years. And the anti-hustle culture commentators have become triter and more idiotic than the stuff they claim to be speaking out against.
Notable: If you want to own anything professionally—a business, a function, a meaningful initiative, a project—you have to work your ass off. It’s a tradeoff of ownership. The duration of this level of intense focus is defined by scope and scale in terms of days, weeks, months, or years.
Choose what you ask to own carefully. The duration of intense focus and effort is then defined by the scope and scale of ownership in terms of days, weeks, months, or years.
(Note to self.)
— Nate