Redefining Work in the Age of Hustle Culture
by Ryan Lillestrand (PZ ‘23)
In a world that calls us to work constantly and sleep less, rest is an act of trusting God.
Rise and grind. Work harder. Thank God it’s Monday. As college students immersed in a culture obsessed with productivity and personal achievement, these messages have been ingrained in us since we were young.
This approach to our work has led us to sleep less, work longer hours, and demonstrate higher rates of workaholism than the generations that have preceded us.
You don’t have to look far to see the deeply harmful effects that this “hustle culture” mentality has on college students and recent graduates. And yet, as problematic as this relationship with our work is, it has become widely accepted — and even encouraged. The “work harder” message seems to follow us wherever we go; we encounter it online, in conversations with classmates, and embedded into the culture of many of the companies for which we aspire to work.
Even as I sit here writing against the hustle and workaholism that permeates our modern work culture, I still find myself susceptible to it. Hustle culture draws us like a moth to a flame with promises of success; it demands that we work longer and harder, that we rise above the rest, and that in doing so we will find fulfillment.
While hustle culture and rates of workaholism have risen to new heights in the last several decades, it is not an exclusively modern phenomenon. Despite being written over a century ago, sociologist Max Weber’s, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, actually gives us an insightful look into the origins of our modern day relationship with work. Weber argues that Protestant ethics and values gave rise to capitalism as we know it. From his perspective, the core beliefs of Protestantism, combined with the Calvinist doctrine of worldly asceticism and predestination, led to a society that emphasized hard work, discipline, and frugality as ways to indicate that you were predestined for heaven. While the topic of predestination remains at the center of many debates within the church today, the powerful influence it had on people’s mindset concerning work is undeniable.
Originating in Northern Europe, the concept spread widely, reaching its height in America. As the nation grew, the concept of the Protestant work ethic that Weber laid out decades earlier grew with it. And as we reflect on the past and examine the present, it is clear that it has never stopped. While the underlying beliefs and motivations have shifted over time, the devotion to hard work and personal achievement has only become more extreme. Now, in the present day, we are facing a generational phenomenon where hustle culture and workaholism affect nearly every area of our lives.
This heightened level of workaholism manifests itself in two ways. For some, it stems from a sense of personal pride in working long hours, serving as a way to prove themselves and show others how hardworking and successful they are. For others, immersion in a culture obsessed with work is alienating. Impostor syndrome is increasingly common, and many end up feeling like they don’t belong or are obligated to work constantly just to keep pace with their perception of what others are doing.
While they seem to arise from fundamentally different mindsets, many students end up navigating even more complex and confusing relationships with their work. They oscillate between feelings of pride and fulfillment from their accomplishments and a persistent fear that they are never good enough, that they don’t belong, and that therefore they must not be working hard enough.
It’s evident that such relationships with work are extraordinarily toxic; however, it’s also important to acknowledge that work in and of itself is not bad — nor is working hard. Work is a valuable and important part of our lives. It takes up a significant amount of our time, and serves as a place where we can learn, grow, and be challenged. In recent years, there has been an increasing amount of research linking happiness to a balanced worklife. And while classes can be incredibly challenging and overwhelming at times, there is joy to be found in the process of learning.
As a Christian, I believe God made us to work. In the book of Genesis, after God makes man, the first thing He does is give him a job: caring for the land and the animals (Genesis 2:15). So if work can both be an important, healthy part of our lives and a source of stress, personal pride, and feelings of inadequacy, what’s the right way to do it? How can we reap the benefits of work without suffering the deeply negative effects it can also bring?
Watching the way workaholism has become so pervasive on college campuses, and often grappling with what my own relationship with my work should look like, there have been two lessons from the Bible that I find to be particularly encouraging and helpful. They bring what I believe are two critical steps in creating a more healthy, sustainable relationship with our work.
First, while hard work is exhibited countless times in the Bible, it is always followed by rest. Indeed, rest, in the form of a Sabbath day, is a commandment expressed clearly throughout the Bible. God Himself modelled this for us when he rested on the seventh day after creation (Genesis 2:1–3). However, the Bible doesn’t tell us to slack off; indeed, it’s quite the opposite. We are called to strive for excellence in the spaces we find ourselves, but in doing so we cannot neglect rest.
For many of us, this can often feel unachievable. We live in a world that doesn’t seem to ever stop, so we feel like we shouldn’t either. But taking time to rest is an essential step in repairing our broken relationship with our work. In doing so, we are forced to recognize our own limitations and all-too-humanness. Choosing to rest is choosing to accept that we aren’t invincible and acknowledge that there are times when we need to step away from our work. Rest rejuvenates and restores us by pulling us out of the chaos of our modern work culture, and allows us to get a fresh perspective and recenter ourselves on what is truly important in our lives.
In a world that calls us to work constantly and sleep less, rest is an act of trusting God. By choosing to take time to rest, Christians trust that God is in control, thus receiving true liberation from the constant fear that things will not be okay, and that we jeopardize our futures if we take time away from our work. While difficult at first, the act of resting plays a central role in reshaping our mindset on our work.
The second step toward fixing our broken relationship with our work is examining the core motivations behind our work. And similar to the message of rest, what the Bible tells us is not what we most often hear day to day. Hustle culture is based on the principle of working hard for self-advancement, wealth, and fame. In contrast, the Bible calls us to find our motivation in glorifying God. The Bible reveals many different ways that Christians can do this, but working diligently is one of the ways that is consistently referenced. But glorifying God does not just mean working hard. As Christians, we are called to use our work in a way that helps and serves others.
However, this is not meant to be limiting. Serving others is not something reserved for a certain set of specific careers, and there is no one best way to do it. Christians believe that God created work as a place where we are able to discover the unique gift, talents, and passions that He’s given us, and then use them to serve others no matter what we are specifically called to do.
There is something powerful about this choice. By recognizing a higher calling than personal advancement, we are able to tap into new, deeper wells of motivation and purpose related to our work. Rather than chase after what society tells us are the symbols of success, we can start to get creative and seek out ways to apply our talents and interests in ways that benefit the lives of others. Anchoring to this higher calling allows us to remain steadfast, diligent, and vision-driven in our work even when we fail to meet society’s definitions of success.
But again, this is not an easy mindset to take. It turns everything we typically hear about what should drive our work on its head.
Self-acknowledgement, in many ways, is a good place to start on the journey back to a healthy, sustainable relationship with our work. By recognizing our own participation in the workaholic, hustle culture we live in, we can begin the challenging process of stepping away from it.
In doing so, we must be willing to recognize our inadequacies, our shortcomings, and our inescapable humanity. We must recognize our own self-worth beyond our performance in school or work, and (for Christians) trust that God will use our lives and our work in amazing and unexpected ways.
The coronavirus pandemic, and the concomitant economic slow down, has forced many of us to personally reassess our relationship with our work and whether it is healthy and sustainable. For many, this abrupt break from the usual, whirlwind pace of work has been particularly challenging. However, it also has provided us with a unique window to reassess our lives and the role that our work plays in them. How we choose to return to our work as the world recovers will be an important decision for each of us to make.
