“Never get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life.” – Dolly Parton
Work-life balance is a concept I have been thinking about a lot lately. It is an idea that made sense to me when I studied it in college. It made sense to me that if you want your employees to be motivated and in good spirits, you have to allow them to pursue their interests in their personal lives.
Alas, work-life balance was not used as much as I expected it to be when I started working or when I heard what people I knew had to say about their experiences with work.
It seems that companies nowadays aren’t respecting their employees’ boundaries as much as they should. They ask their employees to work overtime on most days, to work on weekends, and even sometimes to work when they’re on vacation.
Grind Culture
Grind Culture, or Hustle Culture, is an idea that emerged in the 1990s that encourages people to dedicate their whole time to working more hours than others and to optimize their health and routine to be able to work more.
It is an idea that revolves around putting career goals and material success above everything else in life. You can find many books that also try to sell you this idea. Books that teach you how to maximize your work output, build your network with every social interaction, and influence the people around you to make them aid you in achieving your goals.
This way of thinking has become the standard in many companies. You are now expected to arrive early, work late, and even sacrifice your weekends. So much so that oftentimes, managers consider asking for work-life balance to be a sign of being spoiled or unmotivated.
The problem with Grind Culture is that it leaves something crucial missing from your life, which is life itself.
If you adhere to Grind Culture and dedicate your whole life to material success, you will probably find yourself with a lot of money in the bank, but what good is money in the bank if you don’t have time to spend it on the things that interest you? And what good are expensive clothes if you only wear them to the office?
Without meaningful and genuine relationships, life can become dull and lonely. I think having friends and family around you and maintaining a good relationship with them is the essence of life itself, and without those relationships, life can become pointless.
Fear of Failure
In college, I was attracted to what Grind Culture was selling me. I started watching interviews of business owners and CEOs on YouTube and thought I wanted to be like them when I graduated. It wasn’t until I started working that I realized why, in all of these interviews, it is mentioned that only a very small number of people have what it takes to become CEOs or entrepreneurs, and that is because very few people have it in them to live such a depressing and lonely life.
Fear of failure can sometimes lead us to get attached to things like Grind Culture because we might feel that if we do everything to not fail, we will surely succeed. But how do you measure success and failure? How much are you willing to sacrifice for what level of success? And how do you balance between your goals and your personal life?
These are questions we all must ask ourselves. Because what one person thinks of as success might be a total failure in another person’s eyes. Some people believe that building a family and having a good relationship with their kids is success, and others think that success is measured by how far up the corporate ladder they can climb.
So, what do you believe a successful life looks like? And what does failure look like to you?
Corporate Corruption
The Industrial Revolution had a tremendous effect on society. It brought about many technological advances that made life easier and made many products accessible to almost everyone as an effect of mass production.
However, the Industrial Revolution had a dark side to it. It involved the employment of children, very low wages, and worker exploitation. From 1760, when the Industrial Revolution started, until the 1830s, there were no workers’ rights.
It wasn’t until 1833 that the British Parliament introduced the Factory Act, which stated that the legal working age was 9 years old, children from 9-13 years old could only work 8 hours a day, and children from 13-18 years old could only work 12 hours a day.
What does this say about the state of workers before 1833? What does this say about how adult workers were treated?
This tells us, in my opinion, that the only thing standing between corporations and total worker exploitation is government legislation. Without governmental interference in corporate policies, most corporations would happily use you, your spouse, and your children as cogs in their corporate machine.
This is what makes corporations try to instill Grind Culture into their employees’ minds. Not because they want them to succeed but because they want them to like the idea of being totally exploited.
Conclusion
Ultimately, every person has their own preferences and priorities, and they should live in a way that makes them feel happy and fulfilled. It doesn’t hurt, however, for people to keep an eye out for exploitation attempts or unfair treatment to keep their dignity and self-respect intact.
People also should weigh their priorities before setting out on a path they might regret in their 40s or 50s. Because there are few things worse than the pain of regret.
