Hustle Culture, Workaholism, and Toxic Productivity

hello my dudes my name is Tiffany welcome back to my series internet analysis I make videos about all kinds of topics thank you for being here um it's midnight and this is much later than I would usually film but you know the grind never stops gotta stay hustling actually that's relevant to the topic of today's video I wanted to discuss our toxic obsession with productivity and so-called hustle culture workaholism our lack of work-life balance it's a lot it's gonna be a good video this topic was inspired by my last video about MLMs which by the way has been very well received so thank you to all of you who have watched it but in that video I talked about how MLM is promote this girl boss kind of lifestyle basically if you work really hard you will be successful you can achieve anything and that sentiment is actually pretty similar to the American Dream the American Dream is a set of ideals in which freedom includes the opportunity for prosperity and success as well as an upward social mobility achieved through hard work in a society with few years sorry basically if you work hard enough you will be successful you can rise from nothing and become very wealthy unfortunately I think the American Dream much like that MLM girlboss you're gonna be making six figures a month narrative is not actually super achievable for most Americans but still Americans believe in meritocracy meritocracy is a political system in which economic Goods and/or political power are invested in individual people on the basis of talent effort and achievement rather than factors such as heredity or wealth I'm sorry again it's just a little funny to me shout out to Wikipedia but anyway you know the most hard-working talented and intelligent people are the most success right well whether we have a meritocracy or not we don't people still want to work hard they want to prove their worth and their abilities to themselves into the world even when we see unqualified or under qualified people in positions of power we still believe that we have the opportunity to follow our dreams and get to the top or at least live a comfortable life if we work hard enough I mean it would be so depressing to think that an entire lifetime of hard work could leave nowhere right they ask you how you are you just have to say that you're fine when you're not really fine that you just can't get into it so yeah we still believe in the American Dream so again as I mentioned this video is gonna cover a wide variety of topics related to work this is work to me but first I want to start with hustle culture we've probably all seen those Instagram accounts or high lopes YouTube ads here my garage just bought this new Lamborghini here but you know what I like a lot more than materialistic things knowledge rise and grind the grind never stops get up earlier stay longer work harder fail fail again never ever quit a lot of these Instagram accounts post kind of basic inspirational motivational quotes weirdly over pictures of lions very very often it's lions we get it you want to be an alpha these accounts also share success stories of millionaires and billionaires you know started from the bottom now we're here classic the content is usually aimed at aspiring entrepreneurs I get it especially in this economy and this job market things seem very unstable so the thought of being able to find success working for yourself is very very tempting these accounts are all about escaping the rat race and these type of people hate nothing more than the thought of working a basic office job nine-to-five that I'm gonna make myself rich not someone else their messaging is all about you don't want it ordinary because you're not ordinary you won't settle you want a ten-car garage full of Lambos you're gonna be the next Steve Jobs Jeff Bezos or shark tank guy hell yeah anyway a lot of the content that I've seen isn't actually about starting your own business or how to run your own business but still more importantly this content is about the mindset the millionaire mindset the success mindset in this way it's very similar again to MLMs and as I mentioned in that video emmalin's tend to target largely women while this entrepreneurial content seems to be more targeted at men work hard then work harder maintain a very positive mindset fake it till you make it use the law of attraction obsess about your goals which are you know financial freedom living a luxury lifestyle inspiring others etc a lot of the ideas are the same but the presentation is a little different and some commenters on the last video noted the MLM girlboss narrative can be a bit patronizing like again we are women thank you but still this general concept of being your own boss does motivate people I can understand why people like using those kind of terms because they like to celebrate seeing women in positions of power but again let's not infantilize ourselves let's not minimize our leadership we are bosses we are leaders we are CEOs that's it on the other hand the hustle content for men is very loud and aggressive some guy is always yelling at you like this you want to dissapoint now and the Bob would someone y'all [Music] tomorrow tomorrow but here's my point hustle culture has a big overlap with workaholism in general and that idea of toxic productivity in the u.s. it is weirdly common for people to brag about and feel really good about working a crazy amount of hours per week oh I work 60 plus hours a week I'm exhausted I'm always busy I'm at the brink of mental breakdown but I am grinding we definitely glamorize workaholics because if work equals success then someone who dedicates their whole existence to work must be very successful or at least has the potential to be someday a day has enough hours you just have too many excuses my body wants more sleep but my pockets want more money it's a very like self-sacrificial kind of perspective like literally I'm gonna work myself to the bone and brag about it I'll sleep when I'm dead that's nice but like your brain can't really function without sleep so I'd recommend it LinkedIn also has a lot of this workaholic type of content this hustle content but it's more focused on the corporate side I mean why else would you spend your time on LinkedIn commitment is working on a Sunday when it's your birthday because a client wants a project delivered two times faster and in the picture he has this Do Not Disturb sign thing he's basically just saying like is it the Second Coming am I on fire and I don't realize it like don't bother me now here's the thing I do not mean to make fun of anybody this content can be a bit corny and that's why I'm laughing but I don't want to make fun of anybody for having dreams and wanting to work hard generally that is a great thing having a good work ethic fantastic but this obsession with work and constant productivity can be very very toxic and it's not just these so-called hustlers who are feeling the pressure everybody is feeling this pressure people feel compelled to work overtime to either keep up with their co-workers or to meet their boss's expectations a nine-to-five can easily become a five to nine especially including long commutes but as I said people brag about how much they work they're proud of that because again we associate working hard putting in the hours with success people are constantly mentioning how busy they are oh how are you busy exhausted so busy so much on my plate it's fine now it's fine but really people get burned out depressed anxious or even physically sick because this amount of work is so demanding and exhausting that you just can't really keep it up or at least it's very very unhealthy to try to do so and even worse this work centric mindset doesn't end when we're done with work it follows us home a lot of people check and answer emails at all times we are expected to be constantly available some people even bring home work and continue working in the evenings some people have side businesses or projects that they want to work on after their nine-to-five so that's more hours that they have to put in to work some people even work an extra gig like driving for uber to try to earn extra income and in general a lot of us feel really guilty when we're not being productive this intense work culture has made us feel like we are only good when we're getting things done so even in our free time we feel compelled to be productive and check things off of our to-do lists or clean the house or work out just anything that feels productive feels like you're using your time wisely because you wouldn't want to be wasting your time or being lazy god forbid you spend a night binge watching Netflix and now it's time to give a shout out to today's sponsor which is audible oh my god I'm a real youtuber this is an iconic moment but speaking of productivity you can use audible to listen to books like this so that you can learn and stay on your grind just kidding I mean if you're into that you can do that but I personally like to use audible to relax so I've started an audio book called Aristotle and Dante discover the secrets of the universe which was highly recommended by a lot of people on my Instagram and best of all it's narrated by lin-manuel miranda I could listen to his voice all day audiobooks are perfect for the many hours that I spend commuting on the subway or cooking dinner or when I want to listen to something before bed because I'm scared of sleeping when it's too quiet so to you Amazon Prime members during the month of July there's a special offer you can start an audible membership and save 66% on your first three months so your first three months you pay for 95 per month and after that it's only 14.95 per month every month you get one free audiobook and two free audible originals audible has an insanely huge collection so you will certainly be able to find endless amazing options visit audible.com slash Tiffany perk or text my code to five hundred five hundred to get started thank you audible now back into the video let's talk about work/life balance most of this video is relevant to the United States because that is where I live that's what I'm most familiar with but I think that a lack of work-life balance is pretty common all across the world many people live to work rather than working to live and a lot of times it is not by choice it is a matter of survival we work really hard to pay the bills but then we have such little free time to actually enjoy life it's such an obvious thing to say it but it really is messed up when you think about it how much time we put into working sometimes that jobs that we dislike or even hate and then we spend so little time doing things that actually make us happy sometimes people work harder than they necessarily need to by choice for their future so they say I'm gonna work really hard right now and for the next 30 years so that when I retire I can enjoy financial freedom but it's like that means you have to work really really really hard for the next few decades just so you can chill when you're in your sixties shouldn't the American Dream be about working so that you can enjoy living people also work hard for their families you know as a parent or a provider you will sacrifice yourself for the people that you care about but it's terribly ironic that you have to work so hard to pay the bills and put food on the table and again you have such little time left to spend with those people that you love so much a lot of people even have to work multiple jobs just to get by so you know there are people working 60 70 even 80 hours per week sometimes with multiple part-time jobs so they're not even getting the benefits of a full-time job even though they're working way more hours than that collectively you know hustle culture says work smart not hard but so many people don't have the choice there are so many systemic issues and our work obsessed culture and the combination of all of that makes it really really hard if not impossible to step back from work that's really a luxury that you can only do if you can afford to so I'm about to share some information but I just wanted to connect all the dots to make sure this video made sense basically I really don't like the idea that hustle bros kind of promote that say if somebody isn't trying to follow their dream and start their own business that somehow they're not working hard enough because there are so many people who work way harder than even CEOs of billion-dollar companies but they're barely surviving so there are a lot of systemic issues and barriers and factors that prevent people from following their dreams it's not as simple as work harder how are you gonna tell somebody who works 70 hours a week that they're not working hard enough anyway the beginning half of this video was kind of about personal choice and how people can choose to work really hard or focus on their goals and stay motivated but the second half is kind of about again the systemic issues and what our economy is like here and everything from low wages to lack of benefits can prevent people from being able to advance in the ways that they might like to and finally you know capitalism is just exploitative you know I am very critical of capitalism in a lot of my videos as you may have noticed and sometimes people ask me to make videos about socialism or communism or other economic systems and someday I will but for the sake of this video not being a million years long I'll keep it at that for now so now I want to compare the u.s. to some other countries in terms of our work habits and the hours that we spend at work because this is pretty illuminating in the u.s. we consider a 40-hour work week to be standard because of the 9:00 to 5:00 Monday through Friday schedule but a lot of people work more than that there is actually sat maximum on the number of hours that employees can work in the United States today 77% of Americans work more than 40 hours a week and one estimate said that the average American full-time workweek is 47 hours and that's a lot more than people from other countries the average American employee puts in 260 more hours a year than the average British worker and a staggering 499 hours more than most French citizens so she compared that let's look at the work/life balance in some other countries here are some examples from the Netherlands according to the OECD the Netherlands had the best work-life balance in 2018 in the Netherlands less than half a percent of employees work very long hours which are defined as over 50 hours per week unlike the u.s. that again has no maximum level of hours and the Netherlands an employee can legally work a maximum of 12 hours per shift and a maximum of 60 hours per week the majority of full-time jobs in the Netherlands are between 36 to 40 hours a week so the u.s. does have a pretty high average of work hours in our work weeks but we're actually not even at the top Japan for example is pretty well known for its very intense work culture many would actually go as far to say that the Japanese are often working themselves to death nearly one quarter of Japanese companies require employees to work more than 80 hours of overtime a month and the Japanese aren't taking enough time off either a study found that Japanese workers on average didn't use 10 of their paid vacation days and 63 percent of Japanese respondents felt guilty for taking paid leave but again Japan's not even number one in hours worked according to the OECD Mexicans work the most hours out of any country every year 2246 on average that's 467 more hours than the average American every year and for less than a fifth of the pay now let's look at some other factors in American work culture an interesting thing is that our long workdays are actually often unproductive due to mandatory meetings that interrupt your work and apparently having open kind of office floor plans actually makes it more difficult to work because you're more likely again to be interrupted by people around you so then when you feel like you're not being productive enough and you feel compelled to stay at work even longer which is where a lot of this overtime comes in and then throughout the work day Americans don't really take breaks a lot of Americans actually eat their lunch at their desk and continue working and some people even skip lunch meanwhile in France Spain Greece and other countries lunch breaks can last an hour or more and rarely take place in front of a computer screen so you may be saying okay so yeah we work really hard but at least we get vacations right actually the u.s. is the only advanced economy that doesn't guarantee its workers any paid vacation time so way at the bottom of this list the United States has ten public holidays but those are not guaranteed to be paid so then what about other types of leave like parental leave how does the US compared to other countries the United States doesn't guarantee any paid leave to new parents new parents in the US are guaranteed their jobs for twelve weeks after the arrival of a new baby but they do not have to be paid during that time and to those of us in the US who are kind of used to this you know that's a big hikes but we're like oh well it's fine it's fine or maybe you'll say you know that doesn't mean that no companies offer this and you're right some companies are very generous with their benefits such as paid parental leave paid vacations unlimited sick days that would be great and you would be very lucky to get benefits like that but unfortunately with no mandates and no requirements of paid leave or paid vacations a lot of companies choose not to offer those benefits but specifically let's touch on parental leave and why not having guaranteed paid parental leave it's such a big problem it's completely detrimental so imagine your parents congratulations having a new baby is stressful enough and financially it is a big strain and not having guaranteed paid parental leave forces parents to make some really tough decisions because it's like okay I want to spend time with my baby I want to bond with my baby I would ideally have two parents at home to be able to manage the workload of caring for a brand-new baby so then you know you have to choose maybe one parent goes back to work while the other stays home with the baby but that can be really difficult too again you're still relying on one income or maybe if you're lucky you have grandparents or other family members who are available and willing to help sometimes moms have to go back to work before they've even really healed or even rested from giving birth this should be a time where you can appreciate your family and get to know your little infant and yeah it's stressful and exhausting but it just sucks that people have to worry about you know paying the bills and not losing their jobs again connecting this back to the main question are Americans just workaholics do we love to work I don't think that a lot of people would choose to work as much as they do and in this situation are people putting work over their kids it's like again it's not by choice its by necessity so anyway let's see how the rest of the world compares the u.s. is basically the only major country that doesn't guarantee any paid parental leave as you can see these other countries vary in paid maternity leave versus paid maternity and paternity leave but Wow it is just insane that we just have zero a specific example is Sweden where parents are given four hundred and eighty paid days per child to be shared between them and can be used any time before the kid turns 8 that is so generous and so flexible and so helpful it seems like a whole different world I'm not even a parent but I'm just like incredible speaking of Sweden many of the Nordic country is being Denmark Norway Sweden Finland and Iceland are often ranked as having some of the best qualities of life for factors including work-life balance education health care and benefits like paid leave these countries also have some of the shortest work weeks in the world for example Denmark average hours per week 33 flexible work schedules are common and paid vacation time is ample Danish workers average 33 hours a week and have a right to at least 5 weeks of paid vacation what a dream and the thing is even with shorter work weeks their work days more relaxed than most Americans so while American workers rarely step outside for a break in Sweden workers often enjoy a daily breather called FICA don't come for me an extended coffee break during which employees can gather and socialize this sounds luxurious to me is that's that I don't even have like an office job but I'm still like wow many offices offer two breaks one in the morning and one in the afternoon studies have shown that taking breaks throughout the day helps to increase creativity regain focus and retain information who would've thought having a break helps you function better but anyway it's also more typical of countries in Europe to actually stop working when they leave work so again as I mentioned earlier Americans are very very guilty of bringing their work home by choice or by necessity and apparently one of the worst American work practices in the eyes of foreigners is the tendency to send and answer emails after work hours have ended for example France has what's called the right to disconnect laws which basically allow them to negotiate their availability after work and not have to be responding to work-related emails also Germany has had quite a few companies that have made similar measures volkswagen has set its internal servers to not route email to individual accounts between 6:15 p.m. and 7:00 a.m. a German automaker has a program that deletes all incoming emails to an individual when they are on holiday so that not only will a holiday be left undisturbed about the looming stress of a packed inbox I love that I would love to not look at my email more often but seriously how great is that they get to go to work focus hard for six ish hours and then they get to go home and actually turn off their work brain maybe enjoy their life enjoy their loved ones have hobbies what are those and the thing is data actually shows that having more time off and less work hours actually makes people more productive because they actually have a chance to rest and reset instead of getting burnt out depressed anxious and sick so a lot of companies around the world have been trialing these six hour work days at the same pay rate as an eight work day to see you know what happens to productivity and how the employees respond a guy named grant said I'd be willing to bet that in most jobs people would get more done in six focused hours than eight unfocused hours and then they talked about the importance of getting into your flow so again while a lot of people in American workspaces are interrupted often throughout the day it makes it really hard to get into what they call the flow which is like hours of uninterrupted focused work where you're just like in the in the mode in the in the groove you're just feeling it okay if you get to be undisturbed and really focus then obviously you can get deeper and deeper into your work and probably be more productive they also say that modern organization sabotages productivity many of today's organizations sabotage flow by setting counterproductive expectations on availability responsiveness and meeting attendance with research by Adobe finding that employees spend an average of six hours per day on email another study found that the average employee checks email seventy four times a day while people touch their smartphones 2617 times a day is that real employees are in a constant state of distraction and hyper responsiveness so this video was a lot I know that I hope you guys enjoyed it please let me know in the comments below what your work life is like what's your work-life balance I have you ever heard of it have you ever tried it but anyway I think it's important especially in response to this hustle culture you know hyper toxic productivity where we feel like we constantly have to be doing things and working getting things done it's important to remind ourselves that we deserve breaks we should not feel guilty about relaxing and resetting in fact we need to do those things in order to do our best work and be able to perform and remain physically and mentally healthy you do not need to work all the time do not beat yourself up if you don't you know get enough things done on your to-do list you don't always need to be available and I hope that we make some changes in terms of you know paid leave and vacation time because I know a lot of people are suffering and they could really use a break and they deserve it okay if you watch this whole video thank you so much make sure you guys me on Instagram for some mediocre pics and once again thank you to audible for sponsoring this video I feel like such a good youtuber audible me who me Wow okay can you tell I'm loopy it's again 1:00 in the morning now and my grind is over at least until I need to edit this video but my feet aren't asleep that's really good this is like the first time this has ever happened okay that's all okay thanks bye [Music]

Channel: tiffanyferg

Views: 625,051

Rating: 4.9026794 out of 5

Keywords: Tiffany Ferguson, tiffanyferg, internet analysis, commentary, video essay, hustle, hustle culture, side hustle, productivity, toxic, Tai Lopez, entrepreneur, rise and grind, workaholic, workaholism, overworked, stress, LinkedIn

Id: UAwCJAU2tjk

Length: 25min 30sec (1530 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 13 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Papileon]

What I like about Tiffany Ferg is that she is entirely willing to point out capitalism as being the primary culprit behind much of our most pressing issues and has said that she wants to cover alternative economic systems on her channel, while at the very least aesthetically a very 'normal' commentary channel.

[u/noodle_os]

tiffanuferg is great, she's not hardcore left (at least not obviously so) but she has some great videos. definitely recommend watching more of her if you liked this one!

[u/[deleted]]

The concept of hard work = more success is such a scam.

The average janitor works harder than the average CEO.

[u/rollforint]

I'm fortunate enough to have the luxury of a remote job where I can dictate my own hours and somehow accomplish more than my coworkers who work in an open office.

That being said, I'm still affected by the culture of workaholism in this country. All of my friends are exhausted and overworked and it's difficult to find time to hang out with them for even just a couple of hours. Many of them work 60-80 hours which is just insane to me. Even going to a cafe midday, everyone is just buried in their laptops and nobody wants to socialize or enjoy their surroundings.

I see a lot of talk about how workaholism affects individuals but I'm curious to see a comparison of how a society in general fares when the average person's time is dominated by work. I'm sure if we reduced our work hours in this country we would likely see more people involved in civil discourse and public works.

[u/adminhotep]

Workahol is my favorite drug! I can't live without it, and neither can my family!

Please help!

[u/_MyFeetSmell_]

I cannot stand Tai Lopez.

[u/taurl]

I don’t know who this chick is, but she is absolutely amazing at what she’s doing. Thanks for sharing.