Do you often find yourself worn out? Are you constantly working with very little time for other interests in your life? If the answer to these questions is yes, then you are deep into the hustle culture.
Hustle culture is the lifestyle in which one works continually and only takes a few breaks from work. It is a side effect of the gig economy, where freelancing is becoming a major part of everyday life.
But the hustle culture can be detrimental to your health and below is how you can detach yourself from becoming a workaholic.
Understand the root of your attachment
The first step to detachment is understanding how you go attached in the first place. What are your beliefs around work and rest? Why do you believe endless working is what you need to live well? What will happen if you stop grinding so hard and took longer breaks?
Getting to the root enables you identify the ways of thinking that make you believe that working endlessly is the sign of a good life, which it isn’t.
Establish work boundaries
Once you understand the root cause of your attachment to the hustle, begin to set boundaries. For example, you can decide to not work beyond certain hours a day. Or you could decide to take a day or two rests each week to cool down. This might also mean turning down job opportunities that leave you with no time for yourself, or jobs that demand you work longer and for no additional pay.
Begin taking short breaks
Once you set work boundaries, you might find that your old habits won’t be easily shrugged off. You might still not be comfortable enough working shorter hours or saying no to job opportunities.
Still, begin train your mind to take breaks. Take short breaks through your day, begin and end each day with short periods of meditation. These short breaks will give your mind some much needed serotonin boost, which will result in your brain wanting to take longer breaks and voila! You begin to take a day or two off to rest.
Redefine your idea of success
Success at work is fine, but to break from being a workaholic, begin to look beyond your work for an idea of success. Fine, you want to get that promotion, but what else would make your life meaningful? Invest in your relationships, in learning new hobbies. Reject the rush of societal expectations that you must achieve certain things by a certain age. Instead, have goals but redefine what is success to you and how and when you want to achieve your goals. This way, you will learn to not just work and work, but also do other things in life that could potentially make you happy.