Yes, Hustling Hard Can Be Counterproductive

Hustle culture. Where professionals push themselves to be the pinnacle of success regardless of the world around them. It's when your lifestyle supersedes that of anything else in life for the sake of having the most toys, the biggest house, or the most expensive cars.

Unfortunately, it can also be detrimental to your health.

Although "hustling hard" isn't a new concept, it seems to run exceptionally rampant today. Especially when it comes to the younger generations. Many have the misconception that by pushing themselves as hard as possible, they'll live a better life.

However, it's this incessant drive that winds up causing a slew of problems for those who cannot manage a balance between life and career.

Burning Out Sooner

You'll see this quite often, actually. Pushing yourself to exhaustion just to "get ahead" can easily lead to burning out. I've seen many writers crash and burn, and even I've had my moments of throwing in the towel.

Many YouTubers will force themselves to take breaks in order to prevent burnout. The sad part is that a lot of their fans will stop watching them because of that particular break, which adds fuel to the fire.

Now, not everyone who hustles hard will be faced with burnout over the short term. A lot of people can handle the stress and continue to grind out the content or work. Nonetheless, most will still have to take a break in order to "catch their breath," so to speak.

It's also possible to ruin what you thought of as a fun hobby. After putting in 100 hours per week for four years running my computer repair business, I no longer have any inkling to work on computers as I had in the past. Building computers from scratch was an exceptionally fun hobby that I truly enjoyed. Now when family members call me for help, I dread the phone call.

It's not just freelancers and creators who can feel the sting of burnout. It can actually cost businesses an insane amount of money each year.

According to one study I found, hustle culture has the potential to increase productivity but also reduces job satisfaction and harms workplace relationships. These two facets alone can lead to a high turnover rate for any business. That will translate into business losses as now you have to train a new person to do the same job. Without addressing the turnover rate, it's a cycle that will simply keep repeating.

High Levels of Stress

There's no doubt that hustling can vastly increase your levels of stress. And there is a slew of scientific evidence that demonstrates how stress affects your health. Everything from a variety of mental illnesses to gaining weight can be the result of extended exposure to high-stressful elements. In some cases, the ultimate end result has been a loss of life.

It's exceptionally difficult to think clearly when you're stressed out. Many will become irrational, make poor decisions, sleep less, and suffer through a myriad of complications when it comes to cognitive function. In fact, I can't count the number of times I've made irrational decisions I wouldn't normally have made because the levels of stress were beyond my ability to cope.

Looking back, the results from hustling hard weren't justification enough for how bad I felt both physically and mentally.

Everyone experiences stress on a regular basis in one form or another. It's when the level reaches a tipping point for yourself is when it can lead to severe health complications. Since everyone handles situations differently, there's really no quantifiable level of when intervention is necessary. What is stressful to you may not be as much to me.

But if you don't find ways to relieve stress or relax more often, the hustle you're so proud of could come to an abrupt end sooner than you realize.

Imbalance Between Life and Career

Something else you'll need to consider when it comes to hustle culture is how it leads to an imbalance of life and career. This means that you're putting so much effort into hustling that you're ignoring the elements of life that make it worth living.

Spending time with friends, doing fun activities, hanging out with family...all of these will take a backseat because your drive to succeed is vastly more important.

Unfortunately, a lot of businesses promote this mindset, with detrimental effects. Go to Google and see for yourself how often game publishers push their developers to the brink of collapse. For them, it's all about the "crunch" and pushing as hard as humanly possible to meet deadlines for shareholders. In many of those instances, the developers do, indeed, crash.

Don't get me wrong, reaching for success is never a bad thing. It's when that reach is the primary focus of your entire universe is when it can become toxic.

Do the Ends Justify the Means?

What a lot of people don't really consider is that the ends don't always justify the means. This means the payout from the grind isn't always worth the amount of stress you cause on yourself or your family.

For instance, I know a lot of writers who undercut their bids to clients just for the sake of landing a gig. I'm talking about reducing the bid so much that it winds up being less than a dollar per hour if they had a traditional job. They hustle themselves right out of a decent-paying job because most clients are going to go with the cheapest bidder regardless of quality.

That's a discussion for another time, though.

My point is that hustling hard doesn't always have the glitz and glamour people assume. Sometimes the end result is far less than anticipated. All of that stress, pressure, and alienation of friends and family winds up being more costly than what the end result provides.

Now, not every case of hustling hard ends in lackluster results. However, it happens far more often than what a lot of people will either realize or care to admit.

There's Nothing Wrong with Pushing Yourself, But...

Have realistic expectations about where you're going and how you want to get there. Having goals and pushing yourself to become more than you are can be exceptionally rewarding. But if you hustle too hard, it could end in disaster for yourself and those around you.

After four years of putting in 100 hours per week, I made a promise to myself it would never happen again. The stress was just too great and I missed out on a chunk of my children's childhood. Hustling hard is just not worth the experiences you'll miss if your career is the center of your universe.