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Also known as the grindset, the hustle culture depicts its representatives as go-getters always striving for excellence, as there’s always new goals to reach, more money to make, or more benefits to reap. As BBC Workplace puts it, they are the people who wake up at 4AM, chug down a coffee and a green juice, and get cracking.
According to BBC, such a mindset has likely stemmed from the giants at Silicon Valley and spread like wildfire in part thanks to modern technology. (You have likely seen motivational videos of the benefits of starting the workday at 4am yourself, if you’re online at all.)
“Silicon Valley had an image of being a paradigm of the economy, at the cutting edge of technology,” Nick Srnicek, a lecturer in digital economy at King’s College London, told BBC, adding that such a leading position means that whatever happens in the valley spreads elsewhere, too.
Srnicek added that the hustle culture legitimizes the idea of long hours being the only way to success. In addition to that, “Hustle culture ideology says that people are overworking not because they’re economically driven to, but simply because this is the way go-getters get what they want,” the expert explained.
That might be true as representatives of the hustle culture are often wealthy enough to allow themselves a little break; but instead of that, they choose to continue hustling. If you’re looking for proof, check the LinkedIn profiles of some wealthy individuals and you should be able to find at least a couple of pro-hustle mentality posts.
“With the rise of LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok, hustle culture narratives exploded,” another expert, Dannielle Haig, principal psychologist at DH Consulting—a consultancy specializing in leadership development and wellbeing at work—told BBC.
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Even though, according to Haig, the narratives surrounding hustle culture have exploded with the rise of social media, the bubble seems to have already burst, or is likely slowly going down now. Instead of focusing on the grindset, employees nowadays opt for quiet quitting, which has unsurprisingly been pushed to the forefront by social media, too.
According to Investopedia, having started to appear in people’s professional setting back in 2020 (and in their vocabularies in 2022), quiet quitting refers to doing the bare minimum: enough to maintain the job, but not a step—not to mention a mile—extra.
Back then, in 2020, roughly half of young adults—52% of those aged 16 to 24, to be exact—reportedly believed in the efficiency of the hustle culture. (The older generations didn’t as much, though, as the percentage for those between 25 and 44 stood at 39% and 35% for people 45 and older.)
It’s no surprise that constant hustling can have serious consequences, as it often inevitably leads to stress and burnout. According to a survey carried out by Deloitte, 77% of respondents have experienced burnout at their place of employment. To make matters worse, roughly half of them have faced such a distressing state more than once.
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Deloitte's survey also found that, contrary to some hustlers’ beliefs, those who enjoy their work can feel stressed about it, too. Contrary to another point often pushed by representatives of the hustler culture, stress is not always a motivating force to do better; it can simply be a state that makes one’s life miserable.
The survey found that more than nine-in-ten respondents admitted that having an unmanageable amount of stress and frustration has negatively impacted the quality of their work, and an additional eight-in-ten believed that burnout from work has negatively impacted their personal relationships.
Whether motivated by the hustle culture of saying no to days off or not, many people fail to use the vacation days they have at work; Deloitte’s survey revealed that roughly one fourth of them never or rarely use all of them.
That, too, can lead to some troublesome outcomes, as taking a break at least once in a while is crucial for an individual’s well-being. According to Verywell Mind, our body is designed to respond to short bursts of stress, so prolonging such a detrimental state can lead to chronic stress and health problems that arise from it (such as gastrointestinal issues and high blood pressure, just to name a couple).
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But for people pushing themselves to the limit 24 hours a day, seven days a week, taking short breaks might not be enough. According to the adult and child psychiatrist and a clinical professor at NYU, Lea Lis, MD, in order to avoid burnout and a mental health decline, it might be necessary for them to redefine what success means to them and how to reach it.
“Things like taking a bath, getting your nails done, or ‘me time’ can hardly begin to reprogram the stress we put our bodies through from the second we wake up and grab our phones,” she wrote in Psychology Today.