To think that people should stop glorifying hustle culture?

[WorthyOrca]

It seems like everywhere I turn, people are glorifying being busy and working overtime as a badge of honour. AIBU to think this is unhealthy and contributes to burnout?

I mean, people can be proud of any type of lifestyle they think is an achievement – that’s up to them. It doesn’t mean that onlookers have to agree it’s for them.

It’s different if the ‘hustler’ is calling other people lazy, of course, but that’s probably not happening and that’s an entirely different issue. Let them be proud of something they are working hard to achieve and others can do what they want too.

With the cost of living so high and the UK being a low wage economy people need to do more to have any decent standard of living, YABU.

Isn’t this just the new ‘loadsa money’ aka Harry Enfield 1980s? The Filofax and the brick phone fielding loads of ‘very important calls’. These idiots are usually going to bed at 7.30pm so they can be up at 4am doing their first gym session of the day. Can’t take it seriously.

While obviously, no, on the face of it it’s not unreasonable, but conversely, so many posters on Mn seem to be unusually low-energy, where they come straight home from work and get into their pyjamas nightly, or a single event seems to take over the entire weekend in their heads, or ‘life admin’ is made very heavy weather of, or packing for a holiday is exhausting, that I feel that some people have a very low threshold for ‘busy’.

I think we passed peak hustle culture a few years ago, and there's much more of a sensible attitude to work/life now.

The hustle shark types are routinely taken the piss out of on LinkedIn now which wasn't the case a few years ago.

I see it a lot on hospitality FB groups. Most posters seem to be American and a lot of them brag about working ridiculous hrs with no breaks and having to come in on days off, and are really sneery about staff who "can't hack the pace."

I can never understand why being taken advantage of by their boss, and working themselves into the ground is something to be proud of

'hustle culture' isn't new by any stretch of the imagination. It's just another thing that Gen Z think they invented because they gave it a new name.

I think it depends on where you are in life and also your personality. I always thought I'd work hard in my 20s so that I could enjoy my 30s a little more, with the aim of being self employed or part time when I had kids. So that's where my attitude came from when I was younger and working in the city. I also loved my job, loved studying (I worked full time and studied a law degree in the evenings), wanted to be busy and got sick of going home and turning on the telly every night.

My husband is a workaholic and would honestly be bored if he didn't work like he did. He doesn't take a full weekend off unless we are travelling or its something family related like Christmas. Even when we are taking time off he's thinking about something and I don't mind as he's luck enough that he does his passion as a job.

Don't get me wrong, I have seen toxic work environments where people burn out, go off for mental health reasons, etc and I have spoken up about that. I had a particularly scathing exit interview with a very big, very well known company and I really told them what was on my mind as they handled covid terribly!
It left in mid 2022 and they had announced a hiring freeze at the beginning of covid and never went back on it so our team went from 7 to 4 (one of the 4 being an absolutely useless apprentice who caused more issues than he helped!) while seeing our workload increase by over 300% (I was in charge of compiling monthly stats for management) in that time. Our manager was also told they should stop helping us with our workload as that wasn't their job, they should be purely there to manage so all of a sudden they were trying to fly under the radar when helping us which meant they were less productive. I spoke with a member of the team months after I left and nothing had changed, my manager had not been informed of any feedback (I'd made sure not to say anything bad about them as they were honestly trying to help us as much as they could).

All this to say that I think there's a difference between the workplace telling you to shut up and get on with it and between people who make the choice to try to get ahead, do overtime, save up while they are young or are just genuinely passionate about their job. If it's the latter then I think it's healthy.