Why hustle culture is failing you

If you listen to today’s self-help gurus preaching about success, you’ll hear a familiar refrain: Hustle harder. Work smarter. Grind 24/7. Kill it. They make it sound like success is just a matter of willpower—push yourself hard enough, and the life of your dreams is within reach.

Many young people are buying into this mindset, spending every waking hour working toward ambitious goals, only to find themselves exhausted, frustrated, and unfulfilled. Hustle culture promises success, but it often leads to burnout and disappointment.

The truth is that success and fulfillment don’t come from relentless grinding. They come from something deeper and more sustainable: persistence. Here’s why hustle culture is likely to make you feel worse, not better—and why persistence is the real key to long-term success and happiness.

1. Hustle culture sets you up for failure.

Hustle culture glorifies big, audacious goals—starting a six-figure business, getting six-pack abs, and becoming an overnight success. But what the gurus won’t tell you is that most of these goals require a mix of timing, luck, and sometimes even genetics. No matter how hard you hustle, success isn’t always within your control.

If you’re constantly striving for massive achievements without acknowledging the role of external factors, you’re likely to face disappointment. And when that disappointment comes, it’s easy to internalize it as a personal failure: I didn’t work hard enough. I wasn’t smart enough. I must not be good enough.

The problem isn’t you—it’s the system. Hustle culture convinces people to chase goals that are, by design, difficult to reach. When those goals don’t materialize, the result is often self-doubt, frustration, and a feeling of never being enough.

Persistence culture, on the other hand, takes a different approach. Instead of focusing on massive, high-risk goals, it emphasizes consistent effort over time. It encourages growth, learning, and steady improvement—factors that are within your control.

2. Hustle culture focuses on goals, not processes.

Another major flaw of hustle culture is its obsession with outcomes rather than the process. It tells you to chase success at all costs, even if that means doing things you hate along the way.

For example, let’s say you love podcasting. You enjoy the conversations, the storytelling, and the connection with your audience. But if you follow the hustle mentality, your focus shifts to monetization, audience growth, and social media engagement. To “succeed,” you have to start making TikTok videos, optimizing Instagram posts, and learning marketing strategies—none of which you actually enjoy.

What happens next? You burn out. Even if you reach your goal, the satisfaction is fleeting. Hustle culture traps you in a cycle of constantly moving the finish line: Once I hit this goal, I’ll be happy. But once you achieve it, there’s always another milestone waiting.

Persistence culture, in contrast, prioritizes the process itself. It asks: Do you enjoy what you’re doing? Does it energize you? Can you see yourself doing it for years, regardless of external success?

When you love the process, you don’t need external validation to keep going. Success becomes a byproduct of consistency and passion rather than an all-consuming pursuit of arbitrary milestones.

3. Hustle culture relies on external measures of success.

Perhaps the biggest flaw of hustle culture is that it measures success using external factors—money, downloads, followers, and revenue. While these metrics can be motivating, they’re ultimately outside of your control.

Take podcasting again as an example. You could pour your heart and soul into creating the best possible content, but at the end of the day, your success depends on factors you can’t control—whether people choose to listen, whether the algorithm favours you, whether advertisers see value in your audience.

Hustle culture makes you believe that if you work hard enough, success is guaranteed. But that’s simply not true. And when you tie your self-worth to numbers that fluctuate due to circumstances beyond your control, you set yourself up for frustration.

Persistence culture shifts the focus inward. Instead of measuring success by external validation, it asks: What do I have agency over? How can I improve? How can I grow?

Maybe your podcast isn’t racking up millions of downloads—but are you becoming a better interviewer? Are you developing new skills? Are you enjoying the craft? These are the measures that matter because they’re within your control.

The Antidote: Persistence Over Hustle

If hustle culture is toxic, what’s the alternative?

The answer is persistence culture—a mindset that prioritizes consistency, personal growth, and long-term fulfillment over unsustainable grinding.

Persistence culture encourages you to:

• Engage in activities that bring you joy and fulfillment, rather than chasing external rewards.
• Focus on gradual improvement rather than overnight success.
• Measure progress based on what you can control, not on metrics dictated by others.
• Avoid burnout by choosing sustainable paths instead of relentless grinding.

Hustle culture tells you to work harder and chase bigger goals. Persistence culture tells you to work smarter—to build a life based on what truly fulfils you, not what society says you should want.

If you want lasting success—not just fleeting wins—forget the hustle. Choose persistence.