In defense of the grind
What do we sacrifice when we give up on hustle culture?
By GEETIKA MAHAJAN — giamahajan@ucdavis.edu
Who are you when nobody’s watching? Maybe you’re deeply invested in the latest celebrity drama, or maybe you go home and put on a show that you’ve rewatched so many times you can quote it. The things we do in our alone time become a part of who we are; they outline and structure our entire lives. I’ve heard people say, “How you do something is how you do everything.” While this may be a generalization, it’s also grounded in reality: how you approach your life in private is how you approach your life in general.
A lot of us don’t like the approach we take toward our lives. That’s why we try to improve every new year or birthday: 2026 is the year we begin training for that marathon. At 30 years old, we start reading for fun again. These goals represent our fullest potential — the person we could be and would be, if only we weren’t so tired after class, hadn’t slept in or were a little bit different to begin with. We wait for the day we stop being tired, or inspiration overtakes the desire to doomscroll. Yet, we all know that this day will never actually come.
Bestselling author Rebecca F. Kuang was once asked what “the secret” was to balancing writing novels and completing a Master’s degree and now a Ph.D. — her response was that there was no secret.
“I’m always missing deadlines,” Kuang said. “I’m never getting enough sleep. But I love school and writing too much to not do it.”
Kuang’s mentality may sound like she’s encouraging a work-life balance that could be unsustainable in the long run. But I would argue that she’s actually not talking about balancing work and life at all — rather, her approach is to simply recognize that the pains of effort are far outweighed by the pains of regret. Consequently, her success is an inevitable byproduct of someone who consistently prioritizes their own ambition.
This is where hustle culture comes in. Also known as “the grind” or “toxic productivity,” it’s been attacked by mental health professionals for turning life into a spreadsheet that measures inputs and outcomes. It’s understandable why this performance of constant productivity is occasionally abandoned in favor of slow and mindful living: sacrificing one’s current happiness and stability for a future goal isn’t a sustainable way to live. But hearing it also makes me wonder if our first mistake was misinterpreting the grind completely.
“Hustle culture” urges people to run marathons and become millionaires by the age of 25 — this encouragement, in itself, is not a bad thing. It isn’t wrong to urge people to set lofty goals: that’s one of the only ways that you can truly challenge yourself to grow.
The problem is when you make the end goal a measure of self-worth, rather than recognizing that your efforts to improve your life are making you a better person overall. When nobody’s watching, do you still act like the person you want to be? If nobody knew what you had achieved, would you still put in the effort to achieve it?
In actuality, a lifestyle of working will be productive no matter what the output is, because you’ve dedicated your life to making yourself the best possible version you can be. This can look like working on a passion project when you're tired or going to the gym when it’s raining. It involves doing difficult things — oftentimes things that are so foreign they feel out of character. However, it’s knowing that you can do these “impossible” tasks that allows you to reach seemingly impossible results. Our mistake is valuing the reward over the effort.
Written by: Geetika Mahajan — giamahajan@ucdavis.edu
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