Please go outside
Maybe it’s just me, but it seems like a lot of people are obsessed with working. Hustle culture, the grind, whatever you call it. It’s all over the place. If you’ve seen LinkedIn any time in the past four years, you know what I’m talking about.
It might just be the startup tech scene. It might just be the people I see, both online and off. But it feels like a broader cultural issue. I’m not going to go on a rant here about capitalism and how it gradually drives people to turn their lives into financial opportunities and how we’re slowly coming to see ourselves and each other as businesses focused on increasing capital value. I could, but I won’t. Maybe later. Right now, I just want to ask you all to stop for a minute. Just stop.
Go on LinkedIn or Twitter/X or Facebook or Instagram or any other social media platform and you’ll see countless people talking about work. Which is fine and normal, I guess, since we all work and it takes up a big part of our lives. But the way people talk about work has gotten irritating. Every little incident in our mundane lives turns into a lesson to take into our business lives (which are, increasingly, our side hustles and freelance gigs). Someone said you had nice shoes? There’s a lesson to be learned there about humility and self-reflection that you can apply to your side gig as a marketing consultant for Series A health-tech companies.
It’s been going on for a while. It’s gotten to the point where jokes about this phenomenon fill my timeline. “How the death of my beloved childhood dog increased my sales pipeline” and “What my conviction for arson taught me about B2B sales” and “I asked my boss to fire me because it only makes me grind harder.” I’m not saying those jokes aren’t funny. I’ve made some myself. (They’re not funny, though.) The point is, the whole thing has become a centerpiece of hustle culture and now we make fun of it while we do it, but we can’t stop because we need the engagement because the engagement is a form of self-promotion and marketing that we need to do in order to get the next contract.
The beast must be fed.
But look, it doesn’t. You can take a break. You can shut the laptop and go outside. Text some of your real life friends and go to the park or to a bar or something. Do something that doesn’t involve looking at a screen for a few hours. Talk to people. Read some books.
This advice is both condescending and hypocritical, I know. I’m not better than you, so why am I telling you to go do these things? And am I not also guilty of all the same shit, and telling you all of this with my laptop open in front of me?
Sure. All true. You got me. My advice stands, though. Once a week, go take a walk. Or go meet your friends for a boardgame night. Get some pizza and talk about the last new band you listened to.
Most importantly, do these things because they’re fun. It’s tempting to tell people to go do some non-work thing because it refreshes and resets your body and brain, and you’ll come back to your work with renewed energy and new ideas. That your time away from work makes you more productive at work. That engaging in a variety of activities will make you better at your job and give you new ideas and new perspectives. But that doesn’t matter.
You should go do other things because they’re fun. Do something you enjoy just for the sake of the enjoyment. Don’t think about what it can do for you in other ways - either as a way to improve your work productivity or as a lesson to take back to your LinkedIn followers. Talk about books with your friends because you love books and you enjoy time with your friends. Go see a play because you love theater.
Being a multi-faceted person makes you a better more interesting person, which makes you… blah blah blah. Doesn’t matter. I don’t care. Do something fun because everyone deserves to enjoy their lives. I simply do not believe that any of you truly enjoy writing thought leadership social media posts about how watching your toddler learn to play on the slide with their friends taught you all about enterprise business partnerships. Put that shit away. Go enjoy something.
Have a comment or a response to this post? Take it to Bluesky or LinkedIn.