Hang Up On Hustle Culture

Have you ever caught yourself answering the question, “How are you doing?” with “busy” or “exhausted”? Or maybe inner voices nag you to “be productive!” or “stop wasting time!” or “man up!” when things get difficult. We know this is not good for us, yet we find it hard to eliminate these habits in this extremely fast-paced, highly competitive, over-achieving, and expensive world. .

Believe it or not, my retirees are not immune. Despite all of their time and money, they still think they should be doing more. And while you would think that pandemic living would have given us some respite, many people doubled down on the hustle (gonna write that book, learn a new language, lose 20 pounds and sleep 10 hours every night).

We’ll call it hustle culture: that collective urge to overdo, do it better than everyone else, produce amazing results and glorify stress. No breaks. No sleep. Using 110% effort all 1,440 minutes of the day because we’re sure that someday, “all that hard work will pay off.” Parents and women especially can succumb to heavy doses of it.

And it’s not good. Nor does it produce the amazing results we want. So, what do we do?

The key is to watch your thinking. This one little task can unravel the whole knot. When you find yourself feeling the pull to do more/better/faster, that feeling was generated by a thought. That thought might have happened so fast that it’s unconscious. Invite it back in. What was it? Maybe:
• If I don’t conquer the world, it’ll conquer me.
• If i don’t work harder, I’m going to lose my job.
• Everyone else is getting ahead.
• My friend just bought a new, expensive car or toy or took a vacation.
• I can’t afford to send my kids to private school and they’ll fall behind.
• I don’t get stock options with my job so I have to work harder.
• There’s not enough time.
• There’s not enough money

When you can identify that thought, you can now come into a better relationship with it (big gobs of compassion) and even choose a new one (focusing your attention on what’s right). I find so many people who have been wildly successful by any measure but don’t feel like they are, because they’re only an Amazon stockholder, rather than its founder. Those thoughts aren’t serving them or their families or their experience of love, success and freedom, when all of those things are sitting right in front of them.

If you need new thoughts or a new set of beliefs about hustle culture and how it plays out in your financial planning, please reach out.