Hustle Culture: What It Is & How to Prevent It at Your SMB

When was the last time you truly relaxed without guilt?

If you’re feeling pressured by hustle culture, you’re not alone. Hustle culture is that constant feeling that if you aren’t being productive, you won’t be successful.

We live in a time that often celebrates working long hours and sacrificing personal leisure for professional success. While the concept of hard work is admirable, hustle culture is counterproductive – frequently leading to nothing more than poor time management and burnout.

In this post, I’ll talk more about hustle culture and how it impacts your business. Then, I’ll help you identify the root issues that cause hustle culture and what you can do to transform your business from burnt-out to brilliant.

How-to Guide: 4 Ways to Run an Efficient Small Business

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It’s like building a fire. You can’t stack big, heavy logs on top of a tiny spark. You’ll put too much stress on your embers and end up smothering it out. The same goes if you add too much kindling. Sure, the fire will spread quickly, but once you run out of sticks, it will quickly burn out.

The best work culture fuels its fire slowly but surely. While there are times when it does “dump gasoline on the fire,” it doesn’t come at the expense of the employees. Instead, employees have the tools and encouragement to work hard, whereas hustle culture turns that encouragement into unrealistic expectations.

Is hustle culture toxic?

It’s not 100% evil, but yes, it is toxic. Hustle culture promotes the pursuit of success at all costs, and being obsessed with productivity can harm your mental and physical health. In fact, the World Health Organization (WHO) found that working upwards of 55 hours a week can be harmful to one’s health.

One of the main issues with hustle culture is the pressure to always achieve more. This anxiety-inducing mindset can quickly burn you out and add stress to other areas of your life.

As a small business owner, you are important. You create jobs, drive innovation, and help stimulate the economy. That can be overwhelming. And, when you don’t take the time to reset, you (and your staff) suffer, along with your creativity and innovation. After all, when your brain is constantly at work, it’s impossible to come up with fresh ideas and solutions.

Hustle culture can also impact your bottom line. Let’s look at a few statistics that highlight how employee burnout negatively affects business success.

Hustle Culture Statistics

Here are a few hustle culture statistics that any business owner should be aware of:

• 86% of small business owners work more than 40 hours a week.
• 70% of C-level employees are considering quitting their jobs for one that better supports their well-being.
• 47% of employees feel their work is suffering due to mental health.
• In a study between people who worked 80 hours a week and people who said they worked 80 hours a week, researchers could not distinguish the difference in productivity between the two groups.
• 68% of small business owners want to manage their business until retirement.

It’s time to figure out where to flex your schedule and get back some time to reset. When you return, you’ll be more productive than ever because you’ve established a healthy work-life balance.

But what is work-life balance, and why is it a cure for hustle culture?

Hustle Culture vs. Work-Life Balance

Work-life balance is what you do to manage your health at work. That includes the breaks you look take at the office or worksite and your activities outside of work.

For example, going outside is one way to stay healthy, and it’s also good for your mental health. Hobbies like painting, knitting, sports, and other leisurely activities take your mind off work and create opportunities to bond with friends and family. Taking time for yourself, like hiking or reading a book, can also help you reset for the workday.

These activities might seem trivial, but they can make a big difference. In fact, in 2015, Gap overhauled its scheduling policies to prioritize employee well-being. The company experienced a 7% increase in sales and a 5% increase in productivity. This study shows that work-life balance isn’t just there to make you feel good; it’s a necessary part of any professional career that makes a real difference in your output.

As a business owner, it’s important to recognize hustle culture at your organization. That way, you can prevent it and keep people happy and productive at your company.

How to Identify Hustle Culture at Your Business

Whether you’re working too much or stressing about how much you work, there’s one common denominator in every hustle culture: time.

We all want more of it, but you only get 24 hours each day. Since you can’t add more hours, you have to use your time wisely – and identifying wasteful tasks can boost productivity within your business.

Some common tasks that waste time include:

• Multitasking: While it may seem like a time-saver, multitasking can decrease productivity. Only 2.5% of people can multitask effectively, while the rest of those multitaskers lose 5%-15% of their cognitive efficiency while switching between tasks. Rather than taking on multiple tasks at once, focus on completing one project before moving on to the next.
• Procrastination: When it comes to productivity, it’s not just about managing time but also the tendency to put things off. If you tend to procrastinate, break tasks down into small steps and set deadlines for each. Work on those tasks for 25 minutes and reward yourself with a 5-minute break before you start the cycle over again.
• Disorganization: When your workspace and processes are messy, you spend more time searching for answers than resolving issues. That can hinder the  completion of important tasks and deadlines. Having organized systems in place will save time and reduce errors at your business.

Bonus Tip: If you think your time management skills are a 10 out of 10 but haven’t taken a vacation, that’s the flaw in your workflow.

When it comes to your business, you know best. Take the time to pinpoint what’s sucking time out of your day and identify tasks that do and don’t add value to your business. For example, business management software can automate excessive paperwork and administrative duties.

Once you’ve identified these time-wasters, develop a plan to eliminate or streamline them. Here are a few strategies you can try:

• Be aware of how you’re spending your time: Conduct audits and add tasks to your schedule. Writing down what you need to do and what you’ve completed will help you track your work each week.
• Set your priorities and re-adjust where necessary: Create a list of things you need to do and order them by priority. That will help you identify time-sensitive tasks that need to get done immediately.
• Delegate, delegate, delegate: If you have a team or a partner, don’t be afraid to lean on them. If your company has a good work-life balance, employees might have a little extra time to help with repetitive tasks.

Now that you know what to remove, the next part is fun — you get to create a plan to reignite your passion for small business.

How to Prevent Hustle Culture at Small Businesses

Here are five steps you can take to prevent hustle culture. Surprisingly, the first one is stepping back and analyzing your business.

1. Analyze your workflow.

Evaluate which aspects of your business excite you and which drain you. Don’t be afraid to delegate tasks that don’t align with your passions. Seek support from your staff, stakeholders, and mentors, and see if they have any tips, or tasks that they can take on.

If you find yourself strapped for time, it may be because you’re investing in the wrong areas of your business. It’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day of running a company, but remember that your passion for your industry is what sets you apart.

2. Adopt business management software.

Business management software is a huge game-changer in streamlining repetitive processes. It identifies tasks that are inefficient or need improvement and provides tools to address those issues. Not only does this streamline operations; it also improves your company’s productivity while using the same resources.

Here are five areas where business management software can be useful:

• Accounting and finance to handle invoicing and tax filings
• Payment processors to manage financial transactions
• Marketing to help with campaign management for social media and email
• Internal and external communications to improve productivity and collaboration
• Reporting to aid in analyzing and interpreting data to gain insights

3. Schedule time off.

Schedule some time to relax and recharge your batteries, whether it’s a week off or just cutting out early on a Friday. I’m sure you’re overdue for a vacation, but if a getaway isn’t in the cards, you should at least give yourself a well-deserved break each week. That could be an extra few minutes at lunch or a weekday that you take off each month. It could even be a hybrid day where you don’t answer phone calls or emails and just focus on the tasks that give you the most joy from your work.

4. Keep your workday fresh.

Set aside a few hours each week to brainstorm ideas to grow your company or attend events where you can network with other business owners. That can keep your workday fresh, stimulates your brain, and gives you new projects to work on. You’ll feel less like you’re in a rut if you’re constantly solving problems that require unique or creative solutions.

5. Outsource tasks, if possible.

If you have the resources, it may be helpful to outsource repetitive tasks or projects that don’t require your expertise. The gig economy isn’t likely to go away anytime soon, so sites like Upwork, LinkedIn, and Fiverr are great for sourcing qualified freelancers who can help you run your business.

Small business expert, Jay Schwedelson, talks about the advantages of delegating as a small business owner in the video below:

Get Back to Brilliant

Stop being proud of being so busy. Rest is a necessary part of life, and it’s anything but lazy. Your success is determined by more than just your work ethic and productivity. If this is your first time running a business, your standard of success shouldn’t be measured next to someone who inherited a fourth-generation business.

By adopting better time management practices, you can return to prioritizing your passion and ensuring long-term success for your business.

The Guide to Running an Efficient Small Business

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