I’m A Falsification Of Hustle Culture

Work Hard, But Know That Success Is Often Attributable to Luck

Hustle Culture is a scam, and the people selling it to you don’t practice it; they just sell overpriced courses and make ad revenue on YouTube talking about it. If I could go back in time and tell my 23 year old self that, I’d have spared myself plenty of anxiety.

Hustle Culture pushes the myth of control, the idea that success happens if you just work harder, focus more intently, become obsessed with work, and block out superfluous pleasure. To be clear: focusing, working hard, mastering your trade, and embracing discomfort are typically good things if you want to achieve anything in life.

The problem is that you can do these things and still not have control over your life.

Success is often the result of sheer, dumb luck outside of one’s control. I know this because my career success comes from sheer, dumb luck outside of my control.

After a couple years of being miserable at a job in my home state, I moved to another city to job hunt and was recruited to the best job possible for me. Since then I’ve worked hard, but with safeguards against hustling (namely I’m religious about not working after 5:00pm). Yet still, my income is more than twice what it was at my last job. I didn’t hustle more to get my current job; nothing fundamental changed about me or my work ethic. I just got lucky.

You could say I’ve falsified hustle culture on both ends: before my current job I hustled and constantly failed, and in my current job I’ve not exactly hustled, but still found competence and created value for my organization.

I didn’t do this by cutting out all pleasure or by obsessively cultivating deep focus. I didn’t demonstrate top-percentile intelligence, grit, and virtue. I just showed up, did my job, showed some initiative, and tried to get better. I didn’t create the opportunity by hustling, but when I got lucky, I didn’t blow it.

Rejecting Hustle Culture allows you to embrace what you really want: comfort, happiness, financial freedom, and control over your life. You discover that “hustling” isn’t the only way to get there.

I recommend people trying to be good at one career, and spending your early working years figuring out what that career looks like. After only a few years, the skills you’ll need to create value for other people are second nature. Work doesn’t necessarily become easy, but it ceases to be hard.

That shift is more significant than it sounds. You become more efficient at your core skill set, and your focus can then shift to developing other skills that will make you more successful climbing the career ladder or owning your business.

Admittedly, this isn’t a sexy strategy. It won’t make you rich overnight. But it’s less embarrassing than borrowing money from your parents to buy courses from an online influencer. I’m proud of myself that I never did that.