Hustle or Tussle: Staffer tries living in a Hustle Culture lifestyle

I always see videos on YouTube of girls with pastel gel pens beautifully marking every event for the next two weeks in their planners while vlogging their perfect productive day. They made it look so easy, I figured it would be a breeze to replicate.

But after trying to match these unrealistic expectations by trying to keep my hair and clothes perfect at all times and checking neat boxes off my planner with sparkly pens, I realized I can’t hang.

For three days, I tried living a “hustle” lifestyle: being productive 24/7. I set expectations for myself that I had to meet each day: looking nice for school, limited social media time and starting homework immediately after school, not stopping until I was forced by swim practice.

The three days of perfection didn’t prove that constantly being “on the grind” is ideal — just the opposite. As I lay on the floor in my robe for the last day for thirty minutes, too tired to get up, I realized that if humans need anything, it’s balance.

The first day was a shock to the system. Waking up at 6 a.m. to straighten my hair and do my makeup left me feeling sick with headaches for the rest of the day. All I wanted to do was throw my hair up into a messy bun and fall into a TikTok black hole.

Despite my social media withdrawal, the productivity had its benefits. I started my English book, put away the laundry and cleaned my room all before 5 p.m.

Then I hit my slump.

I ended up checking Instagram for a solid 30 seconds until my dad reminded me that I had to be productive. He was able to keep me on track with more clothes to put away, athletic clothes to hang up and reluctantly helping with dinner-time preparations.

I powered through swim practice, but when the realization hit that I couldn’t watch Shane Dawson’s new video when I got home, my mood plummeted (it falls under the leisure category which was forbidden). Operating at high-speed for a while is one thing, but if there’s no break, it only leads to resent and no down-time to look forward to.

With my energy already drained from day one of non-stop productivity, I felt like I was going to pass out from mental exhaustion. I was running on an empty tank — I couldn’t control what was about to happen when I got home.

After doing my homework, I found myself stress watching “The Great British Baking Show” for about an hour. It wasn’t even enjoyable — the whole time I felt guilty about not being productive.

Just having unrealistic goals set made everything more stressful, even if I wasn’t sticking to them. By that point, I was ready to give up and I knew that I needed a balance of leisure and productivity.

The third day didn’t begin with the extreme drag I felt on the second, but without any sort of brain-break, it soon devolved.

But by the time I got to seventh hour, I was a mess. I handed out the wrong test forms to Appier’s Chemistry class (sorry Appier) and struggled to answer questions about the electron configuration of iron.

I felt like a five year old who had just experienced a sugar crash.

I fought through lifting weights after school with my nonexistent energy and even brought my backpack to the gym to muddle through my Calculus homework in the 30 minutes I had before swim practice. By the end, I used every single one of the 30 minutes to work. By the end of that time, the last thing I wanted to do was go to swim practice.

It was easy for me to be productive for an hour at a time, but my brain needed short breaks about every other hour. Otherwise there’d be consequences — terribly-done homework and feeling like I was about to collapse at swim practice are just two of many.

Once I got home, I was so tired I fell asleep on my floor wearing a robe for about 30 minutes. I was hotter than a hot mess. I woke up and had to get ready for bed, but I ended up sleeping in my robe. I didn’t have enough energy to put a shirt on.

The progression from the first day to the third was night and day in terms of my energy levels and attitude. I endured three miserable days of a hustle culture lifestyle and what I learned was that humans need balance between productivity and leisure. It’s physically impossible for us to run like machines 24/7, because eventually we’ll break.