Why Taking Breaks and The Non-Hustle Culture Can Be Drastic For Your Performance
By: Mia Gradelski
Tags: Lifestyle, Hustle, Stock Market, Advice, Lessons Learned

Image by Simon Migaj

As we get older, the less emphasis we take to prioritize our health and instead put others’ lives before our own. This is certainly a generous and expected act when you have kids or a 12-hour job to provide as the breadwinner for your family but have you ever taken some time for yourself to uncover why? Since money cannot satisfy or fix most things, especially when it comes to your physical and mental health, why do we put our health on the back burner to literally and eventually die? Besides getting a handyman to repair a leaky faucet or broken tire, a terminating illness won’t vanish just because you’ve worked your butt off to buy and show off what you want.

Unfortunately, many of us either neglect or simply don’t understand the detrimental side effects of workaholics unless you lived with Wall Street parents who dealt with back pain, gray hair at 40, 80 hour work weeks, and OCD due to the strain of work. No one ever signs up for this pain but when money wins as the deciding factor in our lives for a job, our lives can easily go downhill and we don’t suffer until we really want to get out but its too late. We are enthralled in hustle culture. Everyone is working too hard and it is time to stop celebrating overworking. We focus too much on how much time we spend in the office or in front of the computer than the actual results produced. In fact, most of us follow the 80/20 rule. 80% of our results come from 20% of the effort or even at a lower scale with our obsession of tracking time. Just becuase you have 50 years of work experience doesn’t mean you produced anything meaningful or drove innovation forward for that period of time. Most people don’t realize that we have 1 year of experience in 50 years. Don’t live the same life. Do something meaningful because you only have a short period of time on earth.

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WFH Bust

This hustle culture has only accelerated since we went into lockdown feeling the pressure to answer every email and by accident work an extra 2–3 hours extra on average because of no commute and 5 ft to the home office/gym/bedroom/lounge area. Welcome to a 500 sqft apartment in NYC where your life is in one room. As with everything there are advantages. You could argue WFH or Zoom University isn’t all bad since the major industries that have transitioned to online work such as finance and tech report major deals, record breaking contracts, and great performance all from home, finally rethinking the dreaded Friday meetings and awkward luncheon, lunchin whatever you want to call it gatherings.

In addition to COVID shifting our lifestyle, as the tech industry has played an immense impact on the way we communicate and work, we also tend to follow more of these inspiration, men, only men, still, that don’t always possess the healthiest work ethic. It is tempting not to follow the brightest geniuses in the world such as Musk and Bezos as our portfolios are booming since the largest tech companies comprise 80% of the S&P 500’s gains and the market is up 15% YTD. Who wouldn’t be upset? We must follow the greats since they have to be doing something right? Right?

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Sleep Toss Up

Well, Musk in particular who is the biggest advocate for no sleep perpetuates this false sense of work ethic. Working hard or hardly working comes into question when you don’t have sleep. There is nothing in your body that is not affected if you don’t’ sleep. It is the most powerful medicine to curing anything in your mind to the physical body and shouldn’t be thought of as something made for lazy people. The truth is, as an employer, who doesn’t want a dedicated employee who voluntarily works tirelessly all day or someone who is first and comes in last to shut the lights after the cleaners in the office?

Everyone but that isn’t achievable because we are humans and have a life that needs to continue.

Sleep isn’t for the weak, only for the smart.

We all know the health-related issues associated with work addiction which include:

-Depression and increased levels of hypertension, anxiety

-Cardiovascular disease

-Burnout and chronic stress

-68% in productivity

-OCD tendencies and symptoms

Yet there are still those naive college graduates that go into investment banking, consulting or medical school, the top jobs that have notoriously long grueling hours that also have the shortest retention rate due to this secret but expected side effects that don’t convince graduates enough. Over my past few years at NYU, I’ve met a few seniors here and there that are extremely determined to stick with this business death path and sacrifice their long term health for short term lucrative paychecks. Their choice and life. There is always a smarter way out. As a 20-year-old myself now acting like a helicopter parent, I’ve preached for this to my friends: Have fun in your 20’s and 30’s but expect to pay a price that exceeds what you intend on spending long term and there is a 50% change your life could cut in half due to overwork. Just saying. It’s all in your control.

But in all seriousness, after getting over the judgment calls that people won’t think of you highly for taking a break and setting boundaries to prevent workaholism to be a part of our lives, not the entire one, it is pertinent we understand how too much relaxation can get you out of the perfect state as well, if that even exists. Even if you are that student lured and drooling over that paycheck to make daddy proud you’re in business or want to brag to your friends, go for it. Some of us love adventure and want a shorter life and others want moderation, personally something I prefer as we are in it for the long haul.

Image by Humphrey Muleba

Let’s discuss how breaks can do more harm than good so we can find that balance.