Why Rejecting Hustle Culture Isn’t Laziness

I don’t care about my career.

I never have, and I most likely never will. 

This isn’t about hating the people I work with or the work I do on a daily basis (I actually love it sometimes). 

This is about hating the lie we’ve been sold that doing more, sacrificing more and sticking it out for longer will lead to success and happiness. 

By now, you and I both know that’s not true. 

The whole idea we’ve built around work and hustle culture is not only toxic, it’s just straight-up ineffective.

One of the biggest lessons I’ve learnt in my 20s is that work is essential for a fulfilling life. 

The thing is, it has to be the right work. 

Work that stretches your creative brain, makes you lose track of time, and challenges you just enough to keep growing. 

The type of work that isn’t found in most modern jobs. 

But the type that is worth doing everything you can to find. 

The Problem with Modern Work 

I’m a huge believer that less is more. 

I believe this to be true in almost every aspect of life – from the stuff we own, and the things we choose to indulge in, to the size of our friendship circle and the people we choose to say yes to.

And yep, you guessed it, this extends to work. 

Most of the ‘good’ that comes from work is countered by the ‘bad’ that comes from the system built around it. 

The 38-hour work week might have made sense a century ago, when most jobs were physical and more time meant more output. 

But today, most of us are doing creative or knowledge-based work. 

The kind that heavily relies on focus, energy and flow – you know… the stuff you can’t really force. 

Strip those 38 hours back, and you’ll be shocked to see how little of that time was spent doing real work, solving real problems (well… probably not that shocked). 

How do you think a young person is supposed to feel when their first experience in the workplace is realizing that working harder doesn’t mean earning more money, it means earning more work?

I remember how demoralized I felt when I first entered full-time work. 

I saw how little got done and how much time was wasted to accumulate those 38 hours each week. 

I can’t think of any feeling other than resentment – and that’s exactly what I felt. 

I realize now that that’s a real tragedy, because it’s taken me a decade to understand how important good work is. 

That’s brought me to another realization: what’s broken isn’t our desire to work, it’s the structure we’re working within. 

And I’m certainly not the only one realizing this. 

Why Gen Z Is Rejecting Hustle Culture 

You might have seen what happened in Nepal last year. 

Thousands of young people flooding the streets to protest their government’s decision to ban social media platforms.

These emotions had been building for years from the corruption, nepotism, and prolonged lack of job prospects for young people in Nepal (their youth unemployment rate is over 20%). 

This is a generation who understood that slaving away inside a broken system was not going to work for them anymore.

That no matter how hard they tried, the system was there to keep them in their place.

So, they did something about it. 

I’m only one year away from being in Gen Z, so allow me, a final-year millennial, to identify with a younger cohort for just a second.

Gen Z isn’t lazy, far from it. 

They’re just tired of putting the effort into a broken system that doesn’t deserve it. 

Sure, this is quite an extreme example in Nepal, but these feelings are being felt by young people across the world. 

These are the same young people who have watched their parents grind away for 40+ years to contribute to a system that finally gives them a few years of freedom when their bodies are too frail to even enjoy it. 

Rebellion is starting to become more common.

If it’s not loud, like the protests in Nepal, it’s quiet, in the form of ‘quiet-quitting’, where people are only doing the bare minimum to not get fired from their jobs (you wouldn’t believe how common this is). 

And yes, it’s horrible that this is where we’ve ended up – but is there any wonder why?

How To Work Well Without Burning Out

I’m sorry if this article has been a bit depressing, but I promise it’s not all doom and gloom. 

There are ways to make work actually work for you, and after going through this myself, I believe there are three steps.

Each of these steps get increasingly more difficult and time-consuming, but each serves a purpose. 

1. Realize the importance of good work

First, you need to truly believe that work is essential for you to live a good life.

You can’t be scrolling the r/antiwork sub-reddit, letting your resentment fester.

You need to have the realization that if this system isn’t suitable for you, you’ll need to create your own system that is (and that this will take time). 

There are people much smarter than me who have written about the power of good work and the alternatives to the work most people know. 

Deep Work by Cal Newport and Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi are incredible books, but I recommend just googling their thoughts (you’ll get about 80% of the knowledge in just a few minutes). 

If you truly believe and understand that humans are meant to be working in short, deep periods of focus, rather than in long stretches of shallow effort (which is all hustle culture really is the end), then the next steps become far easier and much more enjoyable. 

When you believe this, you can finally stop feeling guilty for the way you feel and start valuing the rest, clarity and energy that are necessary to doing good work. 

Without this mindset, I think it’s very difficult to commit to the next two steps. 

2. Identify what you’re passionate about

This is when you have to start taking note of the things that energize you and give you purpose. 

This is going to be easy for some, and incredibly difficult for others. 

When I first started trying to identify the passion/s that I wanted to pursue, I literally couldn’t think of anything (how crazy is that?). 

So if you’re like me, and nothing comes to mind, then you’re going to work a bit harder to find things you’re passionate about. 

This requires you to be selfish with your time, energy and attention, so you can figure out what you like and what you want to do, rather than trying to fit into a system that you despise. 

3. Dedicate yourself to those passions

This is where I’m at right now with this whole writing thing. 

I finally realized that my passion wasn’t a single thing, but a process – creating, reflecting and sharing what I learn to try and help you figure yourself out too.

Realizing this, and actually putting in the work to commit yourself to it, are two very different things. 

But if you do the previous two steps right, the dedication becomes much easier. 

When things get tough in a system that doesn’t value you, you resent and rebel. 

When things get tough in a system that you created yourself, you find ways to adapt.

This is a constant state of trying and failing until things eventually work, but they’ll only eventually work if you just keep doing it. 

I truly believe there is no other alternative, so a big part of me thinks I’m on the right track. 

I hope this article helps you get there too.

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About the Author: Jack Waters is a former journalist turned creative thinker and writer, on a mission to become better every day and live a more fulfilling life.