I know this is garbage engagement bait, but I think it's worth calling out this mindset for the young kids that get hooked on hustle culture, or think of abusively hard work as something virtuous. A few things I have learned to be true: 1. One day you will be dead and shortly after nobody will remember you. They certainly won't give a shit about your work. The ones that do will be the people you loved and who loved you. Not your stakeholders, colleagues or business associates. Shit, most people forget about you the day you change jobs. Even the CEO. Once you leave, you just kind of...fade away. Your work mostly doesn't matter. Also, as you get older you start to watch people die...way way earlier than they should. You genuinely don't know how much time you have. Do you really want to spend it all hustling...or even worse...pumping out engagement slop celebrating hustle culture? 2. More people are like Walter White than they care to believe. At the end of Breaking Bad, Walt finally confronts the truth. He wasn't doing it for the family. "I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. And, I was really... I was alive.” Most people find value in their work, which is great. But my old man gave me incredible advice when I was younger, "Beyond a certain point, a successful career is a selfish act." The people who really get themselves into trouble are the ones who convince themselves they are doing it for someone else. 3. You don't know the cost until too late I've watched friends wreck their health and their relationships chasing the next promotion, the next round, the higher salary. Justifying each step along the way as the right thing to do. Mostly they were just addicted to the work. Or they felt trapped. I don't think any of them would have made the trade if they could go back and know the cost from the start.