The Toxicity of Grind and Hustle Culture

We’ve all heard the term “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” right?

Usually said by some old white dude complaining that millennials get handed everything in life. Generally, it’s followed by “back in my day they had to work for what they wanted“.

Yeah… even just imagining that conversation gets my blood boiling. 

But the truth is, we still idolize that same mentality. Only now, we refer to it as “hustle” or “grind”.

The more time I spend in the personal finance space, the more relevant it is to me. I’ve seen so many equate someone’s ability to work their asses off to their inherent morality. 

That is that same shit the old white dude was spewing just a few seconds ago. 

So let’s talk about it. 

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The History of Bootstrapping 

So fun fact, the idea of “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” dates back to the 19th century. And even more fun fact, it actually was meant to reference an impossible task.

Yep. The same saying we use now to mean moving up in the world by yourself, is actually meant to describe the impossible. 

Ironic? Yes. But also fitting.

Because let’s be honest, NO ONE gets to the top by themselves. You cannot tell me that Kylie Jenner is a “self-made” billionaire. You can’t honestly even tell me that anyone is a self-made billionaire.

Somewhere along the line, people had privilege and people that believed in them.

This even goes for people who truly started from the bottom. Privilege is a spectrum, it’s not black and white.

Most people have SOME sort of privilege that helps them in some way in life.

So this idea that you just need to suck it up and work harder to get to the top is not only a lie, it’s basically impossible to do by yourself. 

The Effects of Grind and Hustle Culture

I see this constantly on social media. People preaching about how hard they work, or telling you that you need to be working harder to get what you want.

People actually brag about losing sleep and being a “loner” while they throw themselves into work. It’s toxic. 

There is this idea of performative workaholism where people perpetuate overworking yourself and giving your all to the grind. 

In the personal finance world, I see this ALL of the time. You know those accounts. People telling you about their 15 side hustles. Or how they work 80 hours a week to “sprint” toward debt freedom. 

Even Elon Musk brags about the idea of a 100 hour workweek.

We see this over and over and start to base our worth on productivity. 

And trust me, I have done the same exact thing.

I used to be proud of how much I overworked myself. I always felt like I needed to go above and beyond for my company and coworkers. No matter what it cost me.

This lead to me having absolutely no boundaries when it came to work. 

I wouldn’t admit it out loud, but I thought that it was a good thing. And honestly, I was annoyed by my coworkers who wouldn’t work overtime. Because I overworked myself, I thought that everyone else should too. 

Now, I see so many people with that same mindset. They think that everyone else needs to be working overtime to get what “they deserve”. 

This inherently presents the assumption that if you aren’t at the top, or aren’t a certain version of successful, it’s because you either didn’t want it enough or didn’t work hard enough to get it. 

That’s a really scary mindset to be in. 

So Who Actually Benefits From This Culture?

Let me give you a hint: it’s not the majority of the population. 

It’s not by chance that bosses, owners, CEOs and rich white men perpetuate this idea of overworking yourself. They aren’t stupid. They know who really benefits from that, and it’s the people at the top. 

Someone who is salaried doesn’t benefit from working overtime, or working 7 days a week to meet a deadline. Their boss does. And more importantly, their boss’s boss’s boss does.

Companies get free work from grind and hustle culture. There is this sense of responsibility to the company (even when that same company would drop you in a second if it helped their bottom line). 

So tons of people start to erase boundaries between work and the rest of their life, with what to show for it?

Overwhelmingly, millennials have less capital, less equity and pretty much less everything (monetarily speaking) compared to their parents. That’s not normal. 

So, if so many people are hustling and grinding, and yet are still falling behind, who is really benefiting from our exhaustion? 

The Negative Impact

Not only are the majority of people not benefitting from being overworked, they are actively being harmed by it. 

Burnout is REAL. This toxic hustle culture results in many people getting burnt out.

This is more than just being stressed about work, or exhausted after a long day. Burnout builds slowly but surely and comes about due to prolonged overexertion. 

And burnout doesn’t just affect the person it’s happening to.

It affects everyone around the person. Personal relationships get put on the back burner. Work stops getting done at all. People feel more apathetic toward the things they once enjoyed.

And sadly, most of the time burnout could have been avoided if the culture of hustling wasn’t there.

People are worth so much more than their productivity.