Hustle Culture Will Be Humanity's End

Areta Pakinga (she/her/ia; Te Arawa, Ngāti Raukawa ki te Tonga, Ngā Puhi)

I don’t like hustle culture.  

Don’t get me wrong, I love hard workers and pushing yourself to do well. But if hustle culture was a cookie, it’d be a Griffin’s Mint Treat biscuit. Hustle culture to me is a vulture just praying on your downfall. 

The whole idea of hustle culture is about being a human doing, rather than a human being. Your mind and body do not know rest. Finish your 9 to 5 and start your side hustle, work that 12-hour shift. Oh, they need someone to cover the next one? Let’s do it.  

The self-improvement community has convinced us that for the low, low price of our time and mental capacity, we too can have a chance at millionaire status. But that just ain’t true. Working long hours and loading your time with side hustles may have monetary rewards, but the rush of ‘getting it all done’ makes us lose sight of what we were really working hard for in the first place. We straight up ignore our physical, mental, and emotional limits and become  slaves to the capitalist machine.  

I just wish people realised that you can still be a #girlboss without slaving yourself away. We may not say it, but deep down, hustle culture has ingrained a mentality in us where we just compare ourselves to each other, trying to win. I don’t like it. Overworking yourself will not always lead to success. If anything, just burnout.  

But I get it—many of you will disagree because of the success story you’ve heard. Just remember, for every success story there are a vast majority of people who have crashed and burned out.  

Hustle culture is selfish. You are doing what you can to one up yourself and get yourself to the end zone, no matter how many people you snub on the way up. 

In Te Ao Māori, it just don’t work like that. What we do, we do for our whānau, our hāpū, our iwi, you name it. Every step forward I make is a step forward for the community, and my people as well. Every reward is a reward, my people will reap as well. 

I just don’t run on hustle time, I run on my own time. I’m in my soft girl era and I’m not mad about it. I do what is needed of me; I give my energy and time to things that I’m passionate about—things that aren’t taxing on me. Time is the most important currency, and you know damn well hustle culture does not respect that. But I do, and most of all, I respect myself.  

So, f*ck hustle culture.