The Reason Hustle Culture Can be Extremely Toxic

Wake up at 5 am, work harder than everyone else, if you’re not working you’re not grinding. We’ve heard all of the schpeels about putting sleep on the backburner.

Just because you feel rested and get quality sleep doesn’t mean that you aren’t doing anything. We live in a world that is all about rushing and getting stuff done.

How can you ensure the longevity of your passion project campaigns if you’re always dead tired? During my fourteen-day quarantine, I’ve made sure to set aside times for writing, but if I’m tired, I take a nap — guilt-free.

When we associate feelings of guilt with sleep, we are doing our bodies and our mental state a disservice. Here are a few of the ways I feel about rest and hustle culture:

Sleep Should Be One of Our Biggest Priorities

Reaching our goals is very important, but if we are prioritizing those goals over our sleep, we are in grave danger. Especially if we want to make rational decisions we need to get proper sleep.

As a daily blogger, I know that when I’m not feeling well-rested, it’s nearly impossible to write articles with a clear frame of mind. I end up taking short-cuts, taking twice as long, and feeling unfulfilled.

If you care about putting out quality work, then it would be in your favor to set sleep schedules up for what works for you. Even if you don’t meet your sleep schedule goals, you should take naps, guilt-free.

To have a sense of how much sleep you should be getting, they say that most adults need anywhere from seven to nine hours. It would be a good idea to shoot for at least seven (that’s what I’ve been doing and it has worked out phenomenally for me). But everyone’s different.

Test out new strategies on how many hours of sleep you need and try to see a difference. Do you have a clearer mind? Do you feel slightly more motivated? Are you willing to put in more work?

More often than not, you’re going to see a spike in your performance and quality of output when you’re well-rested versus when you’re not.

We Are Too Hard On Ourselves

Too many of us are hard on ourselves. We feel like if we don’t become millionaires overnight, we aren’t doing enough.

When you have a long-term perspective, you do your health a favor by not trying to overcompensate work for shortness of sleep. Take your sleep seriously.

As someone who’s served in the military for the past four years, I can say that by prioritizing sleep I did better work and felt a higher quality of life.

We may think that two hours that we spend sleeping extra will kill our productivity, but it won’t. Getting quality rest and feeling good is not something we should feel guilty about by any means.

If you’re well-rested, it should motivate you to get a lot done, if anything. Just because there’s a long road ahead to us achieving our goals doesn’t mean we have to get it done today.

Rome wasn’t built in a day.

If you notice that you’re too hard on yourself, try setting realistic and achievable small goals and tasks. I have found that by turning a macro project into micro-tasks has led me to a lot more success and gives me the momentum to push forward.

You May Just Need A Change In Pace To Achieve More

Many in the hustle culture feel like speed is everything. Speed is a massive advantage to getting a leg up on your competition, but if you’re running a race that they’ve been running for years now, then you’re going to burn out.

Instead of hustling on your project seven days a week, it might be a good idea to cut down to five or even three quality days instead.

When you’re always moving and not taking a second to catch your breath, then you endanger your health and so much more. Your relationships and your friendships deserve the utmost respect and care.

It’s not worth losing a friend or family member in your life due to you being fed up and snapping because of your shortness of sleep. In my lifetime, I’ve seen a lot of friendships end because of impatience and lack of empathy.

A change in pace could be the best thing that you do for yourself. Who knows? When you’re working smarter and not harder, there’s a chance you’ll reach your goal much faster than you planned. Go at your own pace.

The more rested you feel, the better quality your output will be. I feel like this is a fact. When I was in high school, I never got any quality of sleep because I didn’t prioritize it. I was a B student and when I went into college, I chose 10 am classes instead.

The results were staggering. In my first semester, I had straight A’s and felt more enthused at school.

When you think that your competition is the enemy, it may just be your sleep. Hustle culture has set us up to put our projects first and ourselves last.

If you’d like to create a brighter future for yourself, it would be in your best interest to get the sleep you need, take the naps when you need them — guilt-free.