If you walk into any bookstore and browse the time-management or goal-setting section, you will notice something right away. Almost every book sends the same message: no pain, no gain, growth must be painful, life is hard, you have to hustle, success requires white-knuckling your way through misery. Moreover, they wrap these ideas in war-like metaphors and harsh discipline strategies. In effect, their core message is: “If you feel miserable, you’re doing it right.”
However, there is a very harmful concept underneath all of this. It’s the one we’ve been sold by books, productivity influencers, and social media for decades. I’m talking about hustle culture.
There are very few words I dislike more than the word hustle. A few years ago, it somehow became a badge of honour to say you were “hustling.” Instead of asking what someone was hustling toward, the world simply applauded the image of being constantly busy — three buzzing phones, overflowing inboxes, and back-to-back meetings. As long as you looked overwhelmed, you were praised for “doing it right.”
I have so many issues with this from philosophical, spiritual, logical viewpoints, I can talk about it all day long. However, today I want to focus on the practical side, because once you look at the reality, the myth falls apart very quickly.
10 Problems With the Hustle Culture
1. It destroys focus and deep thinking
Research shows that the average office worker is interrupted every 3–5 minutes. As a result, most people never get long stretches of uninterrupted attention. You can send emails in five minutes, but you cannot do creative, meaningful work in five-minute chunks. Therefore, hustle culture keeps people busy but not impactful.
2. It makes people irritable
Constant interruptions force the nervous system to stay on high alert. Consequently, everything feels urgent and everyone seems too slow. Before long, frustration becomes a personality trait rather than a temporary emotion.
3. It robs you of energy and health
Hustle culture glorifies chronic stress. Eventually, it leads to burnout, anxiety, depression, and physical illness. Doctors consistently warn that stress is one of the most destructive forces in modern health. And the hustle culture brings nothing but stress.
4. It narrows life down to only work
A full life requires time for relationships, hobbies, rest, and personal health. However, hustle culture teaches that only work matters. People often realize this too late — after their health or their personal life collapses.
5. Hustle culture fails at prioritization.
“The biggest productivity lie is that everything matters equally.” — Gary Keller
Hustle culture pressures people to do everything. Yet living a good life requires doing the most important things, not all the things.
6. It fuels an obsession with vanity metrics
Followers, likes, views — none of these measure meaning or fulfillment. Instead, they are engineered to keep users hooked so platforms can sell more advertising. The hustle mindset mistakes attention for achievement.
7. It discourages delegation
Hustle culture promotes the idea that you must do everything yourself to do it “right.” On the other hand, nothing great — companies, movements, or families — is built alone. Pride ends up replacing teamwork.
8. Hustle culture doesn’t scale well.
9. Hustle culture ties self-worth to productivity
You are worthy no matter if you had a productive day or not. Success fuelled by external motivation is exhausting. When your sense of worth comes from external validation, it’s never enough.
10. It glorifies complexity
Complexity makes people look impressive from the outside — which hustle culture loves. However, complexity prevents optimization, delegation, and ease. Simplicity is the real path to freedom, but hustle culture rejects simplicity because it cannot show it off.
The Opposite of Hustle Is Intentionality
Instead of chasing busywork, intentionality means focusing on the few things that truly matter and doing them well. Very few tasks in life are truly urgent or important. Therefore, we each have the right — and responsibility — to decide what actually matters, uncover our core values, and align our lives with them.
In my opinion, true happiness happens when our thoughts, actions, and results are aligned with our real values, not with social pressure or vanity metrics. Everyone’s values are different, which is why there is no universal blueprint for a meaningful life. Our job is to uncover what genuinely matters to us — and then live accordingly.
P.S. If you’re unsure where to start, the Focus Finder guide is a free tool I created to help you identify the next three meaningful goals aligned with your values. Instead of guessing, it walks you step-by-step through clarifying what deserves your time and energy next — based on your values, not someone else’s expectations.
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