Giving Up Hustle Culture Doesn't Mean Giving Up

How I set writing goals and design a schedule, from a formerly-ambitious CEO with perfectionism and high sensitivity

Hustle Culture. Art by Stephanie Davidson

I am in the midst of a long (lifelong?) process of transitioning away from ambition at all costs and towards a more intentional, slower journey towards my most dearly held dreams. This shift does not involve throwing in the towel, or giving in to a chaotic work style, or just hoping for the best, though it’s easy to feel like that in a culture that equates speed and productivity with worth. But giving up the singular devotion to speed and productivity does not actually mean giving up. In fact, because speed and productivity can make me (often erroneously) feel like what I’m doing is worthwhile, giving them up requires developing a much more sophisticated understanding of what I am really trying to do in the world and the best way for me to get there—me, with all my specific me-things, not anyone else.

There is truly a bottomless pit of advice on how to do work faster, harder, and more efficiently, and all of these ideas have been comforting to me at various times in my career. Now, having made myself sick living like that, I find myself looking for new advice on how to adhere to some other approach, one that does not focus primarily on beating the clock but still enables fulfilling work that has momentum, impact, and financial prospects. This year, while shifting my career to that of full-time writer, I’ve made progress in this area, and I want to share some thoughts and approaches for writing with with less blind ambition and rush, and with more purpose and discipline.

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First, recognizing personal patterns

Foundational to my new approach is building an awareness of my personal patterns and then creating my schedule, work style, and expectations around those patterns.

There are two other major areas where growing self-awareness has helped me alter my work style towards something healthy and disciplined and away from my former balls-to-the-wall frantic multitasking superwoman approach. The more burned out women I talk to, the more I find these two concepts resonating: