I’m starting to really dislike hustle culture. It starts innocently enough, at least it did for me. GTD was the gateway drug. Then TODO apps. Next thing you know you can’t enjoy anything without optimizing it. One day, you hit the limits of what can be optimized, and suddenly, you have an existential crisis on the order of losing a loved one. I say it’s time we threw the baby out with the bath water, as it were.
What does that mean? For me, it’s about worrying less about results and more about process. If productivity is about ticking off accomplishments, marking things as done, then I want to slow down, be more focused on the thing I’m doing. It’s about being present, about the doing not being done.
As for why, it’s amazing to me how busy we all are and how little actually gets done. For all the tick marks in to do apps, there’s relatively little to show for it. We all feel this viscerally these days, in almost every way. There’s more information than ever, and so little of it is worthwhile and meaningful. There’s more work than ever, and yet companies want to squeeze every drop from their people and then throw them away. Just pure usage.
I feel like business is run this way too. It doesn’t matter any more what you make or how you make it. Only usage. Up and to the right or go away. I guess this is fine if all you care about is money, but then what? You either leave your money to someone else or you leave something of value. I’ve reached the point where I’m tired of the drain on me personally only to have a few dollars to leave behind. I’d rather leave something of value.
Hustle culture is an infection, and doing less is the cure. Do less to do more. That’s my new moto.