The mere thought of hustle culture, also called grind culture, makes me die a little inside whenever I think about it. There has to be more to life than endless hours spent working.
No To Constant Hustling
In my opinion, nothing good comes from glorifying working in such ways that sleep, mental health, and leisure suffer. And then we didn’t even think about social interactions with loved ones and other people yet.
Hustle culture in its utter toxicity is easy to slowly glide into, especially if one’s day job is entrepreneurship. Small-business owners globally project the idea of success through absolutely bonkers working hours, and this seems to rub off.
If we aren’t influenced by others directly, self-doubt and other negative thoughts slowly begin to fester, when we repeatedly compare ourselves to those, who clearly have no balance in life.
Hard work seems to be equivalent to long hours, and anything less is apparently lazy.
The same people scoff at the idea of working four rather than five days a week. Even though multiple tests show that people are more productive when working only four days, it still isn’t good enough.
Capitalist ideas of what success means tie closely to the toxicity that hustle culture truly is. And once those ideas start to take root, undoing the thoughts later is hard work.
A Case For Lifestyle Entrepreneurship
The easiest way to describe lifestyle entrepreneurship is to ask you to picture a scuba diver, who works as an instructor and also offers diving gear for rent on diving tours that their business arranges in a beautiful location.
The purpose of this firm is to provide enough money that the owner can keep on doing what they love, when and where they want to work and live.
In other words, the business exists to support a certain type of lifestyle that its owner has chosen.
My Wants As Entrepreneur
I consider myself a lifestyle entrepreneur in some ways.
The business models of my choice for a total of five websites (five different brands) spread across two firms all aim to require only some of my physical presence as a coach, whilst most of the revenue should be generated from selling digital offerings.
I want to be able to take vacation or days off without the house of cards crumbling down immediately. I also want to work fewer than eight hours Monday to Friday. I certainly don’t want to work regularly during evenings and weekends.
In the middle of the working day, I take two feisty Jack Russels for walks, too, which is non-negotiable. Working outside of the home doesn’t grab my interest in any way, but the beautiful Finnish coast here in Helsinki is very appealing, whether it rains or shines.
Multiple streams of income is how I roll, and selling digital products means that a webshop can be open around the clock, even when I sleep.
Key in this scenario is to get maximum output from minimum input, without losing anything in quality of work. I have yet to find a balance, but compared to when starting in 2011 immense progress has happened.
The longer I work as a small-business owner, the easier it is to slow down and act through well-considered moves. Working smarter rather than harder is such a cliché at this point, but true nonetheless.
Wrapping Up
Slow down. Notice your thoughts and emotions. Shut out the noise.
These and similar pieces of advice are what I wish someone would have told me years ago.
We only live once as us, and it is a fact that those one the deathbed, who still have regrets, didn’t spend enough time with loved ones, taking care of themselves and having hobbies.
It shouldn’t take a dramatic event to shake us onto a new, healthier path of a more authentic life.
Thoughts? Share in the comments below!
Photo credit: Aditya Saxena.
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