Slouching Toward Busyness
“I’m afraid that I don’t know what I like to DO anymore,” I told my therapist. “I know what I need to do. I know what other people expect me to do. I know what other people seem to like to do. But I’m not sure that I trust my own preferences anymore.” This exchange, which first occurred when I was still in graduate school, was the first of many iterations of the same conversation—and one that would not be clarified or resolved until many years later. I described the yawning chasm of anxiety that rose up when I allowed myself to consider things like free time and recreational activities. I overbooked myself doing things for other people, for work, for anything except unscheduled free time, because I could not tolerate the existential feeling of dread that—after years of performing the role of good student, good psychologist, good daughter, good friend—there was no longer an autonomous, separate ME in my headspace at all.
How did this happen? And why did so many of my therapy clients report similar versions of the same theme? Certainly, my temperament and style bend me toward busyness. I am curious, and I like projects and problem-solving. But curiosity and problem-solving should not equate feeling wrung-out and self-alienated. Historically, I have chastised graduate school as a breeding ground for over-extension. Often, fellow students and I talked about the “hazing” experience of academia, the expectations that one is always available, always producing work, and never taking too much credit or showing signs of exhaustion, mental health decline, or resentment. This doesn’t only apply to higher education—many employment settings maintain a similar climate and set of expectations. We have all heard common aphorisms that glorify exhaustive effort and work: “no pain, no gain,” “I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” “work hard, play hard,” and the more contemporary use of the term that captures all of these sentiments: grind culture.
Grind culture is often used to describe our current state of wild accessibility and availability to be in service to others. Primarily, grind culture is used to describe work or vocational activities—for example, that the widespread use of smartphones has led to expectations that emails or work calls can be answered or attended to at all times of the day. But I argue that grind culture has extended into all areas of our lives: the expectation to answer text messages quickly, the implication that a good social life means many different engagements several times a week, the nod of understanding when we and our friends and families greet each other with “busy” as a common answer to “how have you been?”
The fact is, over-exertion is not an opt-in/opt-out situation for most of us. Capitalism teaches and insists that our worth is based on our ability to produce and generate income, and demands very real consequences if we are unable to pay for the very expensive cost of living and existing in this society (eviction, food-scarcity, student loan and other debt accrual, chronic financial anxiety). The toxicity of grind culture is not just that it describes a baseline of survival for many people, but that it also has found a way to glorify overwork so that it is celebrated, rather than seen as the social sickness that it absolutely is. I want to be clear that taking enjoyment in work is not the problem here. Finding meaning in good work, whether employment or personal endeavors, is a wonderful thing when it feels nourishing. I call grind culture insidious because it often shows up as a wolf in sheep’s clothing, convincing us that we can only take pride in ourselves if we are first deemed worthy by the systems that exploit us for our time, labor, and talents.
Is it any wonder then, that so many of us struggle to connect with a Me-ness when these cultural messages tell us that our value is our availability to be in service to others, to a job, to phone calls or emails at all hours, to doing more, to going “above and beyond?” How can we reconnect with our interiority, the core of ourselves, when social messaging suggests that by doing so we are “not being a team player” or—the ultimate dispersion from grind culture—we are “being selfish.” Here are a few things that help me find clarity when grind culture looms:
Remember: you are enough just by existing. There is really no way to talk about this without sounding a little bit like a motivational greeting card, but it is true, and we are told each and every day that it is not. Being told that we have to do certain types of labor or activity to be considered worthy is cultural gaslighting that allows capitalism to keep limping along. It is great if you are a person who really enjoys work and finds meaning in that. It is also great if you prefer not to work (whether or not that is possible is a different question). There is no inherent value that determines your worth as a human is based on economic production.
Find ways to channel “do good” energy that work for you as well as others. I learned to feel pride in being good and helpful, but unfortunately also learned how to be very giving to others while neglecting my own needs. The antidote for this pattern is not that I stop acting in good and helpful ways. Rather, the challenge is discovering how to enact those traits so that they also nourish me, along with others. When I think about ways that I enjoy and draw personal satisfaction from being helpful, I think about cooking delicious foods for friends, growing an overabundant garden than I can then share with others, letting a friend in distress know that I am available (if I truly am) to be on their speed-dial for a venting-call. These activities leave me feeling good AND full, rather than depleted.
Take an inventory of your time and energy: I use these words instead of “tasks” because time and energy are resources that we spend in the service of tasks. How are your hours filled? How many of your hours are spent doing things that feel restorative, meaningful, reciprocal, and nourishing? How many hours are spent “checking boxes” to get onto the next thing? What do you notice about your energy after engaging in certain activities versus others? With this information, consider what you have the power to change and what you do not. Even if a draining job is necessary for the time being, are there ways you can imagine reconfiguring your other hours that can better balance your off-work time?
Finally, where are you engaging in your own personalized version of grind culture? To borrow and adapt a phrase from abolitionist communities: “when we say abolish grind culture, we also mean the grind in your head and your heart.” Where do you catch yourself celebrating your own taxation and exhaustion as a matter of pride? Where do you participate in expecting others to be on-call in unreasonable ways? Where do you feel, deep down, that you are buying into a system that does not have your best interests and health in mind? These are tough and ongoing questions, and are also so helpful in recognizing spaces where we have options to try another way.
Sending you all lots of good energy, and would love you hear about ways you have found to push back against the expectations of the grind. Until next time.
