By Pressure to be the hardest working person in the room gets complicated when you’re working from home.
Words by Eliza Lourenço
Influencers, gurus and your favourite YouTubers might be trying to convince you that it’s time to kick your schedule up a notch. Contrary to this advice, it’s important to take a step back and look at the big picture.
Forbes came out with this article, discussing the benefits of time to let your mind wander. It should come as no surprise that letting your brain overflow into space beyond a schedule yields big creative rewards.
A part of giving yourself permission to slow-down is letting go of the guilt when stepping away from the “rise-and-grind” mentality. This might be hard to do at first, but it’s an important part of creating a healthy relationship to work.
Hustle culture follows the mantra of bigger equals better. It means setting big goals and waking up at 6am every morning to get ahead of the pack.
Some people may find themselves that way inclined; there’s nothing wrong with having a highly motivated early-bird nature.
There’s also nothing wrong with taking a step back from hustle culture during this global pandemic. Everything changed in the blink of an eye and that takes up a lot of mental space.
This article from Zen Habits suggests useful ways of slowing down. A few include:
- Have times when you go off-grid and forget about your devices.
- Put more time into really looking outside yourself and choose to focus on others.
- Try doing one activity at a time. Oftentimes multitasking isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Next time that ever-growing to-do list gets a bit wild, perhaps the best way to tame it is to take the slow approach. It might end up being easier to tackle one thing at a time, rather than burn-out.
How do you feel about hustle culture, especially during the pandemic? Comment below!
Feature Photo by Harshal Desai on Unsplash
