The hustle of Hustle Culture
Finding the words for opinions in response to people who think the only way to succeed is through hustle.
Let’s start with a definition, coming from Wordnik1; my favorite online dictionary—don’t worry, I won’t share all 37 possible definitions:
To push or force one's way.
To act aggressively, especially in business dealings.
To obtain something by deceitful or illicit means; practice theft or swindling.
To shake together in confusion; to push, jostle, or crowd rudely; to handle roughly.
To con or deceive; especially financially.
To play deliberately badly at a game or sport in an attempt to encourage players to challenge.
To move or act energetically and rapidly.
A state of busy activity.
That’s a lot.
What is Hustle Culture?
Hustle culture is this belief that the more you do, the more valuable you are. It centers overworking, incentivizing free labor for promotions or raises. If you can’t keep up, it’s your fault that you don’t care enough. You don’t want it enough.
I’ve seen it at work, during times of hyper-growth and scaling.
There’s a reason medical professionals from emergency services to mental health providers were so familiar with my blue, Dutch workplace in the past.
They regularly supported humans unable to process or keep up with the hustle culture internally and externally. So many people were having panic attacks for the first time, and calling for help, that provider’s started their intervention by asking where they worked. No one was surprised.
It’s a reason workplaces and burnout culture is so prevalent—across the vast diversity of differently wired brains.
I disagree with the premise
When asked about why startups are ahead of Google on AI innovation, Eric Schmidt—former CEO of Google—said, “Google decided that work-life balance and going home early and working from home was more important than winning.”2
It’s this competitive, binary perspective of what it takes to be successful that frames hustle culture for what it is. It sets up a false narrative of “if I work hard enough, long enough: I’ll make it.”
Work, and the collective human relationship with it—is rapidly changing. Even my brief time on this planet, how work gets done is drastically different than nearly decades ago. It’s not a revolutionary idea—it’s a fact.
Companies and people who’s careers have been entrenched in the Hustle fail to understand the wave of change that’s coming...is here.
Side hustles
While hustle culture pervades workplaces of every type, there’s related term for entreprenurial ventures that aren’t a part of primary sources of income: side hustling.
It feels like you can’t just enjoy a thing anymore, or have an idea or passion you’re curious about. Outside of the fact there’s no time to explore that curiosity, there’s an expectation to monetize and commodtize your thing.
Yet.
Side hustles can have very different motivators & reasons for existence:
creating foundations for career changes;
building towards a goal of financial independence;
blazing paths out of the necessity of one, two, three jobs to make ends meet;
diversifying sources of income for financial resilience & flexibility.
They feel more aligned with the future of labor than the inherent toxic capitalistic tendencies of hustle culture itself.
But, that’s a story for another day.
There’s a reason it’s called Hustle Culture
It’s all a hustle.