Has Covid Killed Hustle Culture?
5 minute read
I feel about as part of hustle culture these days as I do club culture. Being freelance and working remotely has distanced me from the jockeying-for-position, side-eye rivalry and comparison culture that’s inherent in the hustle as we know it. Working for myself from a home office has allowed me to set my own tangible goals and focus on them in a considered and steadfast fashion rather than striving blindly for brownie points in a frenzied, pressure-cooker kind of chaos. The pandemic’s impact on burnout culture – as the hustle is also called – has been akin to pulling the emergency brake on a train travelling at high speed. Suddenly the train has come to a screeching halt, and everything’s been unexpectedly upended.
In hindsight, doesn’t it look like we were all being taken for a ride anyway? Isn’t hustle culture just an anglicised version of the misnomer that is the American dream? And like other cultural imports from across the Atlantic – fast food, streaming services, smartphones – which promised us a more exciting, cosmopolitan existence, hustle culture has simply led to a lot of dysfunctional habits. But just like our phones and fast food, the hustle became a kind of comfort zone for many of us. It offered instant gratification – you didn’t have to achieve anything to receive a glowing report, you simply needed to be seen – plus everybody else was buying into it.
Glorified, glamourised and eulogised for so long and by so many, anything less and you were a straggler, a coaster, unambitious and unfocused.
Billionaire Elon Musk notoriously said: “Nobody ever changed the world on 40 hours a week”. There was so much bravado and chest-thumping wrapped up in the hustle, I’m surprised we didn’t see it for what it was – a narrow vision of working life that primarily suited men.
A 2020 article on medium.com reinforced this, claiming that “hustle culture failed women”, while an article in the Harvard Business Review that same year explained how “a general culture of overwork” was “the real culprit in women’s stalled advancement…in the senior ranks of most companies”. The article went on to reveal: “...unnecessarily long hours [are] detrimental to everyone, but they disproportionately penalise women because, unlike men, many of them take accommodations, which exact a steep career price.”
But after two years of lockdowns and remote working, the ‘busier equals better’ mantra looks as healthy and desirable as a junk food diet. Could Covid have killed the hustle? Has the pandemic finally put paid to burnout culture? Galway-based holistic psychotherapist Mary Lynn believes that one positive we can salvage from the wreckage of the pandemic is hybrid working. “For many women, especially those in midlife, having it all often means doing it all,” she explains. “But working at least partially remotely gives women with families and young children more options, including the prospect of a more equal split between those shared responsibilities of domestic duties and childcare.”
Lynn adds that, “Midlife is when many women start to reassess every aspect of their lives. It’s an ideal time to question and challenge the constant narrative of modern life, which is to continuously work harder, aim higher and always be available. Feminist author Germaine Greer said that until midlife, all women are compelled to think about themselves in terms of how others and society see them.” Both Lynn and Greer are right. Given that hustle culture was the pervading narrative for so long, it was a tough one not to sign up to. It would have been a little like standing on the platform as that speeding train careered past, and choosing to hop on a bike instead.
But maybe we should view our careers in the same way we’re told to look at life: “as a journey to be experienced, not a destination to be reached”.
From this perspective, there’s far more to be gained travelling by bicycle than high-speed train. In the past couple of years, most of us have re-engaged with hobbies, exercise and other forms of self-care. Family has been a lot less of a juggle, but not to the detriment of our careers, which have still felt rich and fulfilling. This post-Covid reality has allowed us to set our own pace, work the hours that suit us and eliminate the nonsensical notion that presenteeism equals performance. It’s also allowed us to take those “accommodations” referred to in the Harvard Business Review article without being penalised for it. It’s allowed men to take them too.
But when you’re in the hustle, it can be difficult to recognise it and even harder to disengage from it, and many women remain there, some comfortably, but others unwillingly. If you’re in the latter camp, Lynn suggests asking yourself certain questions to assess whether your career is intrinsically linked to feelings of fear, guilt and shame about how many hours you put in, how available you are to colleagues and superiors, and how removed you feel from other aspects of your life. She suggests you think about the following:
Is your job and lifestyle in alignment with your values?
Do you know your needs and wants at this stage in your life?
What makes you happy, and who and what is important to you?
Can you cultivate a way of working smarter not harder?
Do you flourish by working remotely or do you feel more productive and happier in an office environment?
Do you work better with a structured work schedule or a more relaxed one?
Do you know how to use all communication channels effectively?
Do you still meet up with friends and colleagues?
Do you feel part of a team and within a culture that encourages belonging?
Are you aware of your boundaries?
Have you clear expectations of your goals and what the company expects from you?
Do you have a work routine with a start/finish time, and do you take breaks regularly?
Are you focusing on your health and wellbeing as well as your productivity?
Do you allow yourself time for fun and connection?
According to Lynn, research shows that people who work on a hybrid basis are more productive, have less time off work due to illness and feel happier. They also report better mental health, and they experience less burnout as they feel more in control of their work-life balance. She insists, though, that ending hustle culture is the responsibility of both employer and employee. “Employers really need to embrace hybrid working and view it as an opportunity. They need an HR policy that favours their workforce because a happy workforce means happy customers, which equals greater profit.”
Someone recently said to me that nobody in college dreams of working 30 hours’ overtime a week. She’s right, but somewhere along the way bragging rights were transferred from actual outcomes to hours chalked up. Whether or not Covid has killed hustle culture remains to be seen, but it’s certainly given it a good kicking.
Marie Kelly, June 2022
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