Burnout Culture: When 'Grinding' Becomes Self - Destruction
“No days off, keep hustling, I’ll sleep when I’m dead!” These are phrases that you hear on social media on a constant basis as a way to glorifying what we know as hustle culture.
Hustle culture is defined as a mindset glorifying non-stop work, productivity, and ambition, equating self-worth with professional achievement and equating being busy with being successful.
It’s common to see on social media influencers/entrepreneurs posting their daily life routines that start at 4am and end later towards the night. The message that they’re trying to send is clear if you’re not constantly busy you’re not serious about success.
But there’s only so much that we can see on social media what they don’t post is the physical health deteriorating from stress and lack of sleep due to the ridiculous hours that they’re working the moment when your body literally forces you to stop because you’ve pushed it too far. Young people especially due to social media are burning out at alarming rates there’s such an innate pressure to succeed especially in one of the world’s most expensive cities which is London.
As stated in a previous article of mine when talking about the cost-of-living crisis within the city; you need multiple incomes just to afford rent side hustles aren’t optional luxuries they are survival tactics but now we’ve confused survival with virtue.
Burnout isn’t just physical exhaustion its emotional and mental too and feeling like despite working harder than ever you just can’t succeed it’s also your body’s emergency brake when you’ve refused to shut down voluntarily. What is so cruel about the irony of burnout and hustle culture is that burnout makes you less productive not more the thing you’re overworking for becomes the thing you’re too exhausted to do well.
Despite what you may hear from your favourite social media influencers or your favourite YouTubers, rest is not laziness, boundaries aren’t making you weak and saying no is not failing. Your worth is not measured by how productive you are, you are valuable simply because you exist in the world not because of what you produce.
That is why it’s important as people to redefine exactly what success means because if your version of success is leading you to become burnout, then your definition must change.
The hard work/grind will be there always, but your mental and physical health won’t wait. Act now!
