Recently, finding time to hang out with friends feels like finding a needle in a haystack. A movie night is no longer a quick “what are you doing?” text, but instead a screenshot of my Google Calendar and that of my best friend’s — communicating our availability is overbearing.
Right now, to be a college student simply is not enough. Taking four, five or six classes a semester is not enough. We work student jobs, volunteer, are on an executive board for our favorite student organization, go to the gym a couple of times to keep our bodies moving or maybe we play an intramural sport. The search for an internship is never ending. If you’re lucky, after hours of networking calls and a couple visits to career fairs, you land one for not this summer, but next.
Let’s not talk about the social pressures on top of all that. Find a time to have dinner with your roommates so you can catch up, attend your sorority’s philanthropy event, attend a coworker team bonding, call your friend from home, miraculously make your Friday night clear for a date.
Self care is totally out the door, by the way. Reading a book, just for fun, has not happened in at least a year. Learning that language or that instrument was a fun new years resolution, but real life is in full swing and there simply is not time for any of those hobbies.
Toxic productivity. The belief that you have to constantly be moving to be successful. We romanticize this hustle culture. Our definition of a college student far exceeds that student role. We pick up other responsibilities and commitments, and only when that Google Calendar is completely booked, do we call it a day, feel fulfilled. When rest becomes a sign of weakness, we need to reassess how we measure accomplishment.
Hustle culture emerged in the early 2000s when recession and national disaster headlined at the same time as big names like Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs, according to Her Campus. Their stories painted the picture of people in high power who threw away their social life and dedicated all of their attention to developing their enterprises. Millennials processed this and believed that the average person could be just as successful if they too worked tirelessly and threw away anything else that consumed their time.
While hustle culture arguably drives us to be better versions of ourselves, gets us out of our comfort zone and encourages us to seek out experiences that will benefit us, hustle culture also pushes us to our limits. What starts as motivation becomes a pressure to do more and more. We begin to tie that productivity to our identity and base our self-worth on how much we do, rather than who we are.
Ultimately, hyperproductivity leads to burn out. 89% of college students report feeling overwhelmed, according to Universities Canada. Amplification of deadlines and the all-or-nothing mentality spikes stress and anxiety. Couple that with guilt preventing you from resting and you have physical and mental exhaustion, according to UC Riverside.
Millennials may have created the concept, but social media commonly glorifies hustle culture and promotes it to Gen Z, according to Echo Media. We have all seen the TikToks of influencers waking up at 5 a.m. to go for a casual 13 mile run. Or the 12 hour all-nighter study session montages.. But these 60 second videos fail to show us the negative consequences that this lifestyle brings. Selective storytelling portrays false narratives and creates the illusion that if we just work a little harder, we can achieve great things.
A false sense of urgency, an inability to relax and guilt or shame of not accomplishing enough are warning signs that you may be sliding into a toxic mindset, according to Harvard Health Publishing. The cure? Slow down. Put down your phone when you’re eating, Instagram will be there later. Take a day off of work but leave your schedule wide open.
Schedule in rest, just an hour in the evening where you turn your brain off and watch a mindless TV show or do a face mask. Be kind to yourself when things go astray. Find the positive and focus on the good. Little accomplishments should be celebrated just as much as your promotion, a 4.0 semester or securing that big internship.
We too often exchange small moments of joy for a never ending to-do list. We sell ourselves short for all that we do.
So give yourself permission to be good enough. Reframe the mindset telling you that exhaustion is good and a sign that you are on the right path. If it gets to be too much, remember that sometimes the most productive thing you can do is ask for help.
Success should never come before our well-being. So the next time a glance at your Google Calendar overwhelms you, remember to leave room for yourself, because you are more than what you accomplish.
