Are you buying into the “hustle culture” and believing that the harder you work (and the more others see you work), the more successful you’ll be? This is a common belief among millennials who are constantly seeing their friends, peers, and competitors posting their non-stop efforts on social media and bragging about them in person. It’s easy to start believing that if you aren’t busting your ass 24/7, you’re behind the game. Like many popular myths, not only is embracing the hustle culture unlikely to lead you to success, but it’s also likely to cause burnout and ultimate business failure. Here’s more about what the hustle culture is, why it will kill your profits, and what you should do instead.
What is the Hustle Culture?
The hustle culture is synonymous with constant working (or the appearance of constant working.) In this type of culture, the more you work, the more celebrated you are by your peers and those who see your efforts on social media, your website, or any other place you broadcast your efforts. Those who are fully immersed in the hustle culture tend to blow off friends, family, relationships, and self-care in favor of working more. They put professional achievement above all else and have a deep sense of being a failure if they feel they need to take a break. When you buy into the hustle culture, you create a highly imbalanced lifestyle. You also focus on the wrong things when it comes to success.
How the Hustle Culture is Killing Your Profits
Those who achieve success know that working smart and working hard are not the same thing. Those in the hustle culture are all about appearances. They want everyone else to think they are successful even if their actual business metrics tell a different story. Those who are all about the hustle are also all about the illusion of having (and making) money. They spend revenue just as fast as they can make it (or faster) and end up with a business that’s in the red and a neglected personal life that leads to unhappiness.
What You Should Be Doing Instead
Instead of hustling more, entrepreneurs need to focus on solid business practices. They must evaluate which efforts are leading to the best profits by analyzing their activities and seeing how they convert to real numbers. It’s only through paying attention to your business GPS that you can track the figure that’s really important—your profits. Not sure how to get out of the hustle culture and into the place where success really happens? Here are some ideas.
- Build a strong inner circle. Those who get sucked into the hustle culture are likely surrounding themselves with others who are doing the same. One of the best ways out is to build a strong inner circle of mentors, peers, and friends who will be open and honest with you and who are also committed to running their businesses (and lives) the right way. You are who you hang with, and if you hang with the hustle crowd, you can’t help but embrace that lifestyle.
- Get a good coach. As an entrepreneur, you need someone who’s willing to kick your ass when you go down the wrong path. When you work with a good coach, he or she will be able to spot if you’re getting sucked into the hustle culture instead of putting your focus where it should be.
- Keep learning. The industry (and culture) surrounding entrepreneurs changes rapidly and it’s easy to get sucked into false promises and colleagues if you don’t continually educate yourself. Read books on success and entrepreneurship, attend classes, and take online courses like ours on creating an antifragile business. The more you know, the less likely you’ll be to lose focus on what really matters.
The hustle culture is in our faces 24/7, but that doesn’t mean you need to jump on the bandwagon. When you focus on working smarter instead of harder, you can bypass the hustle culture and achieve real results.
