COVID is the opposite of hustle culture
COVID is the opposite of hustle culture
always on the grind + COVID = (more) disaster
A lot of my coaching clients define themselves by their ability to produce. To work through pain, gut through exhaustion, and put their feelings aside to get stuff done. A lot of them have long COVID now, and they are now physically unable to do that. No amount of ignoring their body can compensate for disability.
Losing that workhorse role often triggers an actual identity loss. These people
believed their worth as employees - or even as human beings - was about how much they could get done. When they’ve lost their identity as an employee, I can usually help them understand their value in new terms. The quality of your work matters, not just the hours you put in. Creativity matters, your ability to analyze complex situations, your ability to run a meeting or crunch the data.I do not blame my coaching clients for thinking this way. I blame late stage capitalism and one of its many demon spawn, hustle culture.
In case you’ve been asleep or avoiding the internet for the last decade, here is a definition of hustle from an arbitrarily selected LinkedIn post from 2017
,“means that you work with a great sense of urgency, you work like you’re running out of time...you run and grab what you want because you’re running out of time…Hustle means you work harder, smarter, and faster than other people…If you’re not getting the results you want and someone else is, it could be that you’re simply being out hustled. Being out hustled is a choice you make. Anytime you want to not be out hustled, I promise you can make it happen. You can get up earlier than anyone else. You can show up. You can choose to do trade distractions for real meaningful work.
The only thing you have any hope of controlling in this world is you and what you do with your limited time. Hustle is 100 percent within your control.”
I chose this definition because it was exactly like dozens of other definitions of hustle I found through a quick web-search, and this one was easy to link to. It’s also so entirely generic that it encompasses all of hustle culture in eight infuriating paragraphs.
Now I shall point out the obvious: COVID means you cannot control your hustle. COVID means you have to rest and heal. Long COVID means you can’t run and grab and get up earlier than everyone else.
Theoretically, hustle culture is finally fading. Allegedly, millennials killed it. Good job millennials! Please destroy the gig economy next and also gritty reboots of beloved childhood cartoons.
However. If you look at celebrity behavior, the dark yet accurate mirror of American culture, hustle culture is not over. Elon Musk only wants you - at twitter or Tesla - if you are capable of “working long hours at high intensity.”
Tori Spelling is frustrated by people calling her lazy when she is actually sick. And Kim Kardashian, of course, thinks women can succeed if they just get their asses up and work.Even my beloved xkcd is showing some toxic attitude about illness.
It’s not just the US. Global culture still loves the hustle. Think of Japanese salarymen, or Chinese cram schools for schoolchildren. The average workweek in Mauritania is 54 hours.
Everyone wants to believe that you can control your own fate by just working harder. If we can’t blame poor people for being lazy, we have to consider that there is something deeply unfair and wrong in our global economic system.
If you’re poor, you want to believe you can get rich by trying really hard. If you’re rich, you want to believe you earned your money fair and square. No one wants to think that we need massive systemic change. Massive systemic change is scary. On some core level we all want to believe in the hustle. Yet more and more of us are becoming unable to hustle.
So, we can admit that we have some massive inequality and justice issues to solve. Or we can blame the victims. Wanting to take time off when you’re infected with COVID makes you a disloyal employee. Being disabled by long COVID is all in your head. COVID is a minor inconvenience, not a global crisis, and if you feel otherwise you’re a whiny gigantic baby.
Guess which option we appear to be choosing?
Mostly women, but occasionally men
When they’ve lost their identity as a person, that’s beyond my skill set and I suggest therapy.
I removed the link so I am not naming and shaming this guy, who was really just expressing the zeitgeist in the most generic terms possible. I am sure you can google it up if you want the whole thing.
He doesn’t mention the quality of work, just the volume. Hustle culture at its most hustle-y.
She’s deep in the hustle rabbit hole, because she is trying so hard to make it clear she works all the time. Constantly. Without cease. It would honestly be okay to take a nap or a vacation, Tori.
Kim Kardashian comes up in this newsletter a surprising amount, I have noticed.
Trust me here, I’ll circle back to COVID.