Scroll through your social media feed on any given Monday morning, and you’ll see it. The rise and grind posts, the #TeamNoSleep mantras, the glorification of a life packed with so much work there’s barely room to breathe.
In a high-energy city like Lagos, this pressure is amplified. The expectation isn’t just to have a job, but to have a side hustle and be constantly building, constantly climbing.
Two days ago, I shared my story of stepping back for three months to focus on a new job and my family. That decision was a conscious rejection of this very mindset; the hustle culture that tells us we must always be “on” and always be achieving.
Hard work is essential. It builds character and creates value. But hustle culture has twisted this noble idea into a toxic obsession with being busy. It has made us forget a fundamental truth: work was originally designed for purpose, not just for survival.
This post is about identifying the warning signs that you’ve been caught in the hustle culture trap.
What is the Hustle Culture?
Before we go on, let’s distinguish between healthy ambition and the hustle culture.
Hard work, driven by passion and a clear goal, is honorable. It builds empires, creates art, and solves problems. The hustle culture, however, is different. It’s the glorification of overwork as a moral virtue and the only valid path to success.
It’s a trap because it’s built on a foundation of toxic beliefs:
- It prioritizes Busyness over Effectiveness: It creates an environment where being seen to be working at 10 PM is more impressive than finishing your work efficiently by 5 PM. The appearance of effort becomes more important than the quality of the output.
- It Celebrates Burnout as a Badge of Honor: In this mindset, exhaustion is a sign of commitment. Sleep deprivation is proof of your dedication. It creates a perverse competition of who is suffering the most for their success.
- It Ignores the Law of Diminishing Returns: It pretends that the tenth hour of work in a day is as productive as the first. It ignores the reality that creativity, problem-solving, and quality all plummet when the brain and body are exhausted.
In cities where the energy is palpable and the drive to succeed is immense, this pressure is amplified, making it even more important to recognize the trap for what it is.
5 Signs You’re Trapped in the Hustle Mentality
1. You Confuse Busy with Productive
The Trap: Your self-worth is tied to how packed your calendar looks. When someone asks, “How are you?” your default response is a breathless list of deliverables, as if you’re pitching your own importance. You’re constantly in motion, but at the end of the day, you’re not sure if you made real progress on what truly matters.
The Alternative: Shift your focus from activity to impact. True productivity isn’t about doing more things; it’s about doing the right things well.
2. You Treat Rest as a Weakness, Not a Strategy
The Trap: You feel a pang of guilt for taking an evening off. Hustle culture has convinced you that sleep is a cute hobby for people who aren’t serious about success, like knitting or collecting stamps. You see burnout as a necessary price for success.
The Alternative: Frame rest as a non-negotiable part of your work cycle. Just as an athlete needs recovery days to build muscle, your brain needs downtime to be creative and effective. Our bodies are designed to work in natural energy rhythms, not in a constant state of “go.”
3. Your Identity and Your Work Are the Same Thing
The Trap: When someone asks, “Who are you?” your first thought is your job title. A project’s failure feels like a deep, personal failure. You’ve forgotten what hobbies you have outside of work because all your energy is channeled into your career.
The Alternative: Intentionally cultivate a multi-faceted identity. You are a professional, but you are also a parent, a spouse, a friend, a creative, and a member of your community. True richness comes from a life that is more than just a single story. This is the key to finding fulfilment, not just success.
4. You Are Always “On” and Available
The Trap: You find yourself replying to a work email with “kindly find attached” at 11 PM, while the sound of your neighbour’s generator roars in the background. You take “quick” calls on a Sunday morning. This isn’t a sign of dedication; it’s a cry for help.
The Alternative: Create and enforce firm boundaries. Have a clear start and end to your workday. Turn off notifications. Protect your personal time as fiercely as you would a business meeting. It starts with saying no to the expectation of constant availability.
5. You’re Chasing a Goal That Doesn’t Excite You
The Trap: You’re grinding away for a version of success defined by society; the fancy car, the promotion, the online applause. You’re hustling, but if you’re honest with yourself, you don’t feel passionate about the destination. You’re running hard on a treadmill someone else set for you.
The Alternative: Define success on your own terms. What does a rich life look like to you? Ditching the hustle mentality gives you the clarity to get off the rat race and pursue a path that is authentically yours.
Reclaiming the Original Purpose of Work
The alternative to hustle culture isn’t laziness. It’s a return to a more meaningful, more human, and ultimately more effective view of our work.
If you look at the oldest wisdom traditions, work wasn’t initially a curse. The first job description given to humanity in the Garden wasn’t about toiling for survival. It was about purpose. It was an act of cultivation, creativity, and partnership. It was about taking something good and making it better. The reward was in the work itself.
The hustle mentality reduces all work to the post-Garden reality: a desperate toil for bread. It strips away the dignity and joy of the task, focusing only on frantic output and survival. It tells us our value is measured by how much we sweat, not by the meaning we create.
Ditching the hustle is an act of reclaiming that original purpose. It’s about seeing our work, whether in an office in VI, a tech hub in Yaba, or a creative studio at home, as our garden to tend. What does that look like in practice?
- It means focusing on craftsmanship: Taking pride in the process and the quality of the work, not just the speed of completion.
- It means seeing work as cultivation: Using our skills to grow something, a business, a team, a community, or our own expertise.
- It means understanding seasonality: Recognizing that, like a garden, our work has seasons. There are times for intense planting (launching a project), times for steady watering (daily tasks), and other times to let the ground rest and recover (taking proper breaks and holidays).
This shift from “grinding for bread” to “tending a garden” is the ultimate antidote to the five traps of hustle culture. It’s the foundation for a career that is not only successful but also sustainable and deeply fulfilling.
Choose Purpose Over Panic
Moving beyond the hustle mentality isn’t about giving up on your dreams. It’s about choosing a smarter, more sustainable path to achieving them. It’s about understanding that the most fruitful work comes from a place of focused calm, not constant panic.
It’s choosing to cultivate a garden, not just grind for bread.
Which of these signs resonates with you the most? How are you trying to build a more purposeful approach to work in your own life?
