From frenzy to focus: how can we cancel hustle culture cnd create a new sustainable work paradigm
In this article we discuss how we might deal with hustle culture and create a new work paradigm where people can thrieve. Creating the circumstances for you and the people around you to thrieve is a key pillar of the Design a Life You Love Philosophy.
Many of the clients I work with are living in a world where they are measuring their worthiness and sense of self by the accumulation of material things. Not always achieving these things in the timeline or manner they thought they would often leads to hustling and burnout.
The Design A Life You Love Philosophy is about still achieving the milestones you desire for yourself but doing it in a way that is aligned, sustainable and safe for you, your body, your mind and nervous system.
I recently contributed to this article in Authority Magazine and offer a fresh perspective on the work/life paradigm.
Full article below:
“Hustle Culture” is an ethos often propounded by young self-proclaimed internet gurus that centers around the idea that working long hours and sacrificing self-care are required to succeed. This mentality may have gained popularity in the mid-2010s, but it has peaked, and now it has been sardonically renamed “Burnout Culture.” So why exactly is Hustle Culture the wrong path to take? What damage can it cause? What is a viable, sustainable alternative to hustle culture? How can we move from Frenzy To Focus? In this interview series, we are talking to business leaders, mental health leaders, marketing experts, business coaches, authors, and thought leaders who can share stories and insights about “How We Can Cancel Hustle Culture And Create A New Sustainable Work Paradigm.” As a part of this series, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Ann Smyth.
Ann Smyth is a Certified Life Design Coach. She combines Human Design, brain and nervous system retraining in a trauma-informed way to help clients fall back in love with their lives again. Her Design A Life You Love Philosophy is curated to help people take back control over how they live, work and play so they can experience their lives in the most sustainable and intentional way possible. She works with clients who have experienced significant life events such as a divorce, a breakdown, the birth of a child and are seeking significant life change. Those who have adopted the design a life you love philosophy now enjoy a quiet and luxurious sense of contentment and ease in all areas of their lives.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to know how you got from “there to here.” Inspire us with your backstory!
What has got me from there to here, is leaning fully into a philosophy I live by which is that you can design a life you love.
About ten years ago having followed a life path I was told from a young age would lead to happiness and fulfilment I found myself wondering, is this really all there is? Is this what it all adds up to? Chasing things for the next 40 odd years of my life? When will joy, contentment and ease come into the equation? Will it be when I’m 65 and it is socially acceptable to accept a slowing down in my professional drive — only to find out my body may not be able to keep up with the desires my younger self hoped I would achieve by the time I was 65? Pondering these questions made me miserable. Looking around at my picture perfect life, I felt nothing. It was a scary and vulnerable place to be. On the outside everything looked perfect, but inwardly I was feeling empty.
As I embarked on this journey of self-discovery the wisdom of Human Design crossed my path and I leaned in. And what I found was a modality that gave me all the information I needed to navigate my unique way. The answers to who I was, what I wanted and how I should do it were all inside of me and Human Design was the yellow brick road to connecting the dots deep inside of me. I do work I adore, experience expanding, meaningful and playful relationships with all of the wonderful people in my life and enjoy a deep sense of quiet luxury in all areas of my life.
The philosophy of designing a life you love is not about achieving high income targets every month, pushing and striving for more and constantly trying to prove to the world around you that you are successful. It’s about intentionally deconstructing your life and deciding with certainty how you want to spend your most precious asset — your time by designing your life around how you want to spend it living, working and playing.
Tell us about your typical day!
I typically work four days a week Tuesday to Friday. Monday’s are my bandwidth day, a day were I spend 30% of my time on my business, 30% on my personal interests and the remaining 30% gets filled with unforeseen matters. Knowing I have this time built into my calendar, increases my productivity and allows for more ease and enjoyment in my free time.
I take a trauma-informed approach to all actions in my life because the most regulated person in any situation is always the most successful and influential. Knowing how to regulate your thoughts, nervous system and emotions leads to better decision making and ultimately better results in your life.
What lessons would you share with yourself if you had the opportunity to meet your younger self?
That making decisions is the most important thing you will ever do because great leaders are great decision makers and take action. Procrastination and lack of decision making leads to inaction, and this keeps you feeling stuck and frustrated.
As the leader of your own life, it is important that you know how to make decisions that are right for you rather than outsourcing that task to those around you. It is important that you always prioritize the decisions and wisdom of your inner intelligence and intuition over the opinions of others. This is the best way to make sure that you feel safety inside of your brain and nervous system when making decisions. Listening to your intuition is a key skill that should be developed and encouraged at all stages of life.
Ok, thank you for sharing your inspired life. Let’s start with a basic definition to make sure that all of us are on the same page. How do you define Hustle Culture?
Hustle Culture is one which reveres the action of working non-shop at the expense of all else including your relationships, finances, health and well-being. The birth of this culture occurred around the 1970´s however since this time with the advancement in technology since this time the effects of Hustle Culture such has burnout, stress and anxiety levels amongst the working population have increased exponentially.
Hustle Culture is cultivated upon two core aspirational beliefs:
If you work hard enough, you will achieve success.
If you have success you will be powerful.
The ideology of Hustle Culture makes people act more aggressively and quickly to get things done regardless of the personal consequences.
Now let’s discuss an alternative to Hustle Culture. To begin, can you share with our readers a bit about why you are an authority on the problems that come with Hustle Culture?
As a Coach I work with clients who have suffered the effects of Hustle Culture, for example feeing energy depletion and exhaustion, increased mental distance from their work, experiencing feelings or cynicism about their job and reduced professional efficacy. Clients often come to work with me following a burnout when they have realised that their approach to work needs to changed or be redesigned in a more sustainable and safe way for their brains, bodies and nervous systems.
y way manipulate the state of lack of safety and connection that consumers are in by promising to provide a solution to this with their products or services being advertised.
Can you help articulate the downsides of Hustle Culture? Why is this an unsustainable work paradigm?
While our bodies are well equipped to handle stress in small doses, long-term or chronic stress and burnout can have serious effects on all systems in your body including musculoskeletal, cardiovascular, respiratory, endocrine, nervous gastrointestinal and reproductive systems.
Chronic stress and burnout over long periods of time can result in a long term drain on the body. People who find themselves under severe stress are often in a fight, flight, freeze of fawn state inside of their nervous system. These states are designed for protection yet they have become the ´normal´ way of reacting and experiencing in all situations. From a cognitive perspective stress and burnout affects your brain´s long term memory function and can damage the prefrontal cortex which is essential for focused attention and executive function.
When you are not able to fully engage your executive functions or move to a state of regulation in your nervous system your ability to show up in your personal and professional life as you wish to is significantly impaired.
Let’s now discuss Focus, the opposite of Frenzy. Can you please share one area of your personal or business life where you simplified things and then felt less frenzied and more fulfilled? Can you please explain?
This is such an important question. The main area where I am always looking to simply things is TIME — out most valuable asset. The quality of our lives is determined by our relationship to time, how we spend it, invest it and appreciate it. With clients it is very important to review their relationship with time, personally, professionally and recreationally. So often we see people working on increasing their productivity by doing more, time blocking and attempting to squeeze in as much ´work´ as they possible can in the shortest time. Whereas my approach both for myself and my clients is to simplify where possible and approach how they spend their time in a very wholistic way.
Article continues below …
The specific term “Hustle Culture” may have been popularized in the 2010s, but the concept behind it and the behaviors that come with it can be traced back hundreds or perhaps even thousands of years. From your vantage point, experience, or research, what were the main drivers of Hustle Culture?
One of the main drivers of Hustle Culture is peoples over commitment to their work. Don´t get me wrong, of course we expect employees to be committed to their work but not to the point where this outweighs their commitment to their overall health, well-being, family, friends and finances.
The propensity to over commit to work can be seen in the 12 stage drivers of burnout established by psychoanalyst Freudenberger:
Excessive ambition — possessing a deep desire to prove you worth with an inability to set boundaries.
Working harder for long hours and not shutting off — answering work emails at the weekends, late at night, constantly checking your phone and not taking holiday or vacation days.
Neglecting your needs — including sleep, food, connection and exercise.
Displacement of conflicts — you dismiss problems and can feel jittery, panicky or threatened.
Revision of values — you only have time for work related demands, with work becoming your only focus.
Denial of emerging problems — becoming increasingly intolerant, cynical or aggressive towards others seeing time as a limited resource wasted on interacting with others.
Withdrawal from your social life and interactions with loved ones — you isolate yourself and find your social circle becoming smaller.
Behavioural changes and psychological reactions — such as memory loss, heightened sensitivity or inability to concentrate.
Depersonalisation — not feeling your value or worth as a human being, feeling a lack of contact with yourself, feeling numb and hopeless.
Inner emptiness — anxiety, addictive behaviour such as overeating, drinking alcohol excessively to overcome the empty feeling inside.
Depression — increasing lack of interest in work and/or personal life.
Complete burnout — mental and physical exhaustion and collapse, may experience symptoms of autoimmune, at this stage it is essential to seek medical attention.
I work in the marketing industry, and so I’m very cognizant of this question. What role do you see that marketing and advertising has played in creating the frenzy caused by Hustle Culture that many of us feel?
Great question! If you look through the stages of burnout listed above you will see that in each stage your nervous system does not feel safe or social.
When you feel unsafe you will do anything to try and move towards safety, and as a result of the high levels of stress and anxiety you may find yourself under you are unable to fully engage your cognitive functions. This means you cannot fully assess if the products or services being marketed to you will infact make you feel better and give you the sense safety and connection you are ultimately seeking.
Marketing and advertising strategies in many way manipulate the state of lack of safety and connection that consumers are in by promising to provide a solution to this with their products or services being advertised.
Can you help articulate the downsides of Hustle Culture? Why is this an unsustainable work paradigm?
While our bodies are well equipped to handle stress in small doses, long-term or chronic stress and burnout can have serious effects on all systems in your body including musculoskeletal, cardiovascular, respiratory, endocrine, nervous gastrointestinal and reproductive systems.
Chronic stress and burnout over long periods of time can result in a long term drain on the body. People who find themselves under severe stress are often in a fight, flight, freeze of fawn state inside of their nervous system. These states are designed for protection yet they have become the ´normal´ way of reacting and experiencing in all situations. From a cognitive perspective stress and burnout affects your brain´s long term memory function and can damage the prefrontal cortex which is essential for focused attention and executive function.
When you are not able to fully engage your executive functions or move to a state of regulation in your nervous system your ability to show up in your personal and professional life as you wish to is significantly impaired.
Let’s now discuss Focus, the opposite of Frenzy. Can you please share one area of your personal or business life where you simplified things and then felt less frenzied and more fulfilled? Can you please explain?
This is such an important question. The main area where I am always looking to simply things is TIME — out most valuable asset. The quality of our lives is determined by our relationship to time, how we spend it, invest it and appreciate it. With clients it is very important to review their relationship with time, personally, professionally and recreationally. So often we see people working on increasing their productivity by doing more, time blocking and attempting to squeeze in as much ´work´ as they possible can in the shortest time. Whereas my approach both for myself and my clients is to simplify where possible and approach how they spend their time in a very wholistic way.
Time spent with loved ones, being out in nature, appreciating art and culture etc are all opportunities for growth and mental bandwidth. With these punctuations of personal and recreational time being prioritized my clients find themselves thinking more creatively and innovatively. Taking space and time to regulate their nervous system and process and feel emotions with people they love, or things that inspire them allows them be better leaders, communicators and problem solvers when they return to the workplace. As a result they are able to spend their time at work in a state of focused productivity that generates results and can be present human beings when they are not in work.
What life experiences have you adopted in your business or personal life that have left you more satisfied? Can you please explain?
Over seven years ago I came across Human Design, a modality which encourages the science of differentiation. This means it celebrates the individuality each of us has, yet due to cultural, societal, generational, relational, racial and religious conditioning we find ourselves supressing. Human Design is similar to the personality tests you might be familiar with such as Enneagrams and Myers-Briggs however where it differs is that it goes into significant depth and detail about how you are designed as an individual to operate in the world. It shows you your keys skills, talents, how you are designed to market, do business and connect with the world around you, how you communicate with others and how you are designed to make decisions.
Many of my clients have been introduced to Human Design by their therapists following a burnout, as it offers the language and empathy they need to understand themselves better. It helps them understand why their previous approach to hustle and workaholism has contributed to their stress and anxiety and offers them the tools they need to simplify their lives.
When I adopted this way of being into my life, everything became more satisfying. I was no longer trying to keep up with others, I accepted my own unique way of doing things and communicated those boundaries with my colleagues. The more I honoured my unique Human Design the more the world around me started to adjust to how I was designed to work and this positively impacted both me and the people I was working with.
Here is a little caveat however, if you have been operating from a dysregulated state inside of your brain and nervous system (and remember you may have been operating from this state for so long, you might think your dysregulated state is your ´normal´ state), making drastic changes to how you have always done things can be further dysregulating. Our brains do not like change, even when the benefit of making this change will positively impact our overall health and wellbeing so you need to know how to manage this part of you.
For this reason, I work with my clients to integrate their Human Design using brain and nervous system retraining so they can create a more intentional slow and sustainable life that feels good from the inside out.
Okay, fantastic. Here is the main part of our interview. In your opinion, how can we break the addiction to being busy or trying to find the next big thing? How can people truly focus on tasks that make THE difference to their business and lives giving them satisfaction or life purpose alignment? Based on your experience and your area of expertise, can you please share “Five Ways To Move From Frenzy to Focused”?
1 . First and foremost, I want to stress to you readers that they must acknowledge the state of their nervous system before attempting to implement any action steps. Taking action while your nervous system is in fight, flight, freeze of fawn (yes people pleasing is a dysregulated response) will further aggravate the state you are in and add to the feeling of busyness.
2 . Familiarise yourself with the 12 stages of burnout listed above and be honest with yourself where you sit on this scale.
3 . Depending on where you are on that scale seek out help from a professional who is going to help you navigate the changes you need to implement in your life.
4 . Decrease shame you may be feeling towards yourself for experiencing burnout and feeling frenzied. Understand that you did nothing wrong, experiencing a burnout is a result of Hustle Culture, not because of you. The environment you have been in has cultivated this sense of unease and frenziness inside of you. Hustle culture is a societal issue not an individual one, as a society we need to cultivate kinder more empathetic workplaces where people feel safe to be themselves and share their unique talents in a way that feels good to them.
5 . When you do get to a place where you are able to regulate your brain and nervous system around taking action in a way that feels better for you and less frenzied, it might be time to take stock of how you are living, working and playing in life. Consider how your time and how you spend/invest it might need to be reorganised in a way that serves you rather than stresses you.
How would you describe a work paradigm that is a viable alternative to Hustle Culture? What would it look like, and what would you call it?
I believe the positive results coming from the trials of a four day week in some European countries is a step in the right direction. With 86% of companies reporting that the trial of a four day week was successful and they would consider implementing it on a full time basis, it shows us that productivity is not directly proportionate to the amount of hours someone spends in front of their screen.
In terms of an alternative work paradigm, I would love to see some changes happening in the hiring process.
Very often you find that the job description and the actual job are not the same thing. Potential candidates dress up or in some cases manipulate their experience to suit the description of the job and this does not always produce the best candidates.
I have a vision where companies would adopt an open hiring policy, where rather than advertising in the conventional way for specific roles with a predetermined list of duties that companies would invite requests for proposals from interested parties where they submit their full list of skills and talents so that the company can then decide if those skills fill a gap in the company that may otherwise be missed.
Reverse engineering or redesigning the hiring process where candidates are invited to inform the company about their skills and talents without the rigidity of a job spec would allow for more suitable hires and innovate thinking. This is often how I have my clients approach a new job search and the end result is that they feel more content with their work as it is designed around them and their talents.
Thinking of clever names would not be my forte but as you are asking let’s call this new paradigm reverse engineering hustle culture!
Do you have any favorite books, podcasts, or resources that have inspired you about working differently?
Podcast: Diary of a CEO, the Hubberman Lab
Book: Scarcity: Why having too little means so much and Non-violent communication
What is the best way for our readers to continue to follow your work online?
Of course, your readers who are interested in learning more about applying the Design A Life You Love Philosophy to their lives in a trauma-informed setting can find reach me via my website www.annsmyth.com or on Instagram @annsmythcoaching
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent on this. We wish you only continued success.
Link to article as featured in Authority Magazine here.
