Why More Founders Are Trading Hustle Culture for Slow, Sustainable Success
I am guilty of pretty much always being on. I don't even know what to do with myself when I'm not on, a lot of the time.
At least once a week, I'll have a sleepless moment at 3:00 a.m. and decide to be productive and work on an award application, website copy, or (ahem) upload a blog post. Personally, it's not necessarily that I feel like it'll never be enough, but I certainly always feel like there's more that I could be doing.
That's why I texted my friend Shulamit (Shula) Ber Levtov, the entrepreneur's therapist, and asked her if she'd be willing to share a guest blog post for us about why it's not only okay, but necessary for us to take a beat and slow down.
Here's your encouragement, directly from Shula, to shift to slow business mode.
Photo Credit: Isabelle Bouchard
Are you always on go mode?
Does it feel like whatever you do, it's never enough?
Is there always something more you can do?
I get it. I really do. Because in late spring 2023, I realized something that stopped me cold: I was exhausted, bone-tired, and still telling myself I wasn't hustling. I needed to embrace slow business, but I hadn’t realized it yet.
Recognizing Hustle Culture When You Think You've Escaped It
Tara McMullin says "American culture is hustle culture," and she's absolutely right. Hustle culture is so deeply woven into the fabric of how we think about work that you can be pushing yourself relentlessly while genuinely believing you've opted out of the whole mess.
I thought I was doing it right. I didn't work evenings or weekends. I took civic holidays off. I went on vacation. I'd recovered from toxic productivity, stopped tying my worth to my output, rejected the "rise and grind" mentality.
Even within my so-called healthy boundaries and healthy mindset, North American hustle culture had found its way in. And what a conceit to think I'd be exempt. We're all affected by this stuff. All of us.
I wasn't working 24/7, but I was still driving myself hard. The fact that it happened "only" within certain limits let me pretend I wasn't hustling. But I was still creating unnecessary stress for myself. Still wearing myself out. Still hustling.
What Is Hustle Culture? Understanding Toxic Productivity in Business
Hustle culture is a way of thinking that leads to behaviors focused intensely on productivity, ambition, and success regardless of the cost. As NPR's Isabella Rosario puts it, "It's fashionable to work yourself to death, or at least look like you are."
One reason hustle culture does so much harm is toxic productivity, the belief that we must be productive at all times. We become resources from which value must be extracted. Under this spell, we extract from and exploit ourselves because we've internalized the idea that we have no other value.
Toxic productivity doesn't even let up when the work is done. Finish a project and you might feel guilty for not doing more.
This attitude connects directly to the extractive economy of capitalism, which sees value only in what can be taken: resources, money, labor. This thinking gives us the term "human resources." Under capitalism, humans have no inherent value beyond the exploitation of their labor. Nature has no inherent value either, which is why capitalism resists protecting it. Toxic productivity also equates productivity with moral virtue and rest with immorality. All the things we need to support our humanity get framed as immoral or simply bad.
Hustle culture is toxic because it holds that your success is evidence of your worthiness. You have to keep striving because if success proves worth, then poverty or lack of success proves you're unworthy.
This traps us in relentless hustle so we can "feel" worthy, making slow business or intentional entrepreneurship feel impossible or irresponsible. I put “feel” in quotes because worth isn't actually a feeling. Our sense of worth is a story we tell ourselves based on external "evidence" that generates emotions—either good if we have a good story to tell ourselves, or bad if we have a bad story.
Success or lack thereof is determined to a significant degree by privilege. This includes things like the "luck" of who you know and being in the right place at the right time. These are the advantages, invisible to the individual, that give them a leg up over members of marginalized groups.
Several experiments have shown that small, random, initial advantages can spiral into huge ones.
Success can breed success, and inequality breeds more inequality.
Photo Credit: Isabelle Bouchard
When Hustle Is a Survival Response: Entrepreneur Burnout and Anxiety
Hustle isn't always toxic. Sometimes it's a normal survival impulse.
Anxiety about business survival or success can propel you into action despite yourself. You can find yourself overworking even when you don't value that behavior and know it's harming you.
If this is the case, there's nothing wrong with you.
If you want to change it because it's harming you, one way you can work with this urge is by checking in with yourself. You can ask, "I wonder, is this something I really need to do, or is it an anxious part of me pushing me forward?"
Anxiety about business survival is natural. It's normal when in survival mode to feel anxious and pressured to do what you need to do to survive.
There's nothing wrong with you. Of course you want your business to survive.
Early on in business, there may actually be a need to work harder and longer than you would in an established business.
But this anxiety can persist into later stages when survival is no longer at stake. Parts of you can have a hard time catching up with the newer reality that your business is viable, surviving, maybe even thriving, especially when you're busy and can't connect with yourself and be present.
These parts need to be able to take in that things are okay now.
How to Slow Down as an Entrepreneur: Working with Business Anxiety
Another way you can work with this anxious drive to hustle is to acknowledge that your anxious parts are trying to help you stay safe.
You can offer your anxious parts appreciation for their efforts to help you stay safe. You might also reassure them that you are with them, taking care of them, paying attention to them.
It's very important to note that when you're appreciating and reassuring these anxious parts, you are not covertly implying they shouldn't worry. Worrying is their job, and it serves an important purpose: ensuring your safety.
However, they may benefit from being brought up to date.
After, and only after, you've let them know you're there with them and care for them, you can invite them to look through your eyes. You can invite them to take in the idea that "that was then and this is now." You can invite them to notice that you and they are here, now, on such-and-such date and time in such-and-such place, and the business is going okay.
Once you’ve really connected with your anxious and worried parts, you might see if they can receive the reminder that slow living is also a strategy for staying safe. Building a slow business means you'll actually be here for the long haul.
Photo Credit: Isabelle Bouchard
From Hustle to Slow Living: My Journey to Intentional Business
Here's what I've learned: ambition can mask something else. My ambition was masking anxiety based in survival needs and habits of driving myself that I thought I'd already dealt with.
Ultimately, whether or not you let go of the hustle depends on how much a critique of hustle culture resonates with your values and on a decision to do the inner work to live more in alignment with those values.
>Because at heart I am anti-hustle and pro-human, with reflection and support I was able to see through my own nonsense. I saw that I was distressed because I was still hustling.
I asked for help to
plan how to reach my goals and set my priorities in my business. Then I also got support for my planning process.
That is what ultimately determines what I do day to day, so I expect less of myself in the moment and can let go of what doesn't get done.
This way I don't keep robotically moving forward, caught in a trance of doing the next thing and the next thing and the next thing.
Before this, it took all my limited energy to get through the workday, and my quality of life outside work sucked, honestly.
I'm generally happier and more relaxed now. I've built a more intentional business that allows for slow living. I'm no less ambitious, but I'm done sacrificing my humanity for productivity. I'm generally happier and more relaxed now. I'm enjoying working for myself again. I enjoy my evenings and weekends and have the capacity to address the demanding situations in the lives of those I love.
I need and want to care for myself by regularly checking in through self-reflection and with the support of others. This helps me be aware of what I'm doing. It helps me ensure I'm continuing to make choices that serve me, not the parts of me that think if I work intensely I can do more in eight hours than is humanly possible, enabling me to get everything done.
Because I don't actually want to get everything done anymore. I want a slow business that sustains me instead of draining me. I want the kind of intentional entrepreneurship that lets me be fully human.
About Shulamit (Shula) Ber LevtovKnown as The Entrepreneurs' Therapist, Shulamit Ber Levtov is a fractional chief mental health officer for founders. A culture change catalyst who works at the intersection of mental health and entrepreneurship, Shulamit has 30+ years of entrepreneurial experience and 24+ years as a licensed trauma therapist and coach. Over the years, she’s helped countless folks navigate the emotional ups and downs of business ownership. Shula is an award-winning entrepreneur and certified expert in Entrepreneurship Development, The Trauma of Money, Financial Social Work, and Nonviolent Communication. Bringing together both lived experience and professional training, education and expertise, Shulamit's approach is both compassionate and practical.
