What history's top creatives say about hustle culture

There’s a delicate balance between hustle culture — an obsession with productivity — with mindfulness, and being present in a given moment. The two are antagonistic. One demands haste and the other calls for stillness.

But both sides of the calculus are necessary for a good, meaningful life. Too little work, and you can grow restless. Not enough stillness and your mind can collapse into disarray.

In The Writing Life, Annie Dillard shares a thoughtful meditation on what a good life entails, and how she achieves solace through finding stillness in the work she does. Dillard writes:

There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by. A life of good days lived in the senses is not enough. The life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less; time is ample and its passage sweet.
Who would call a day spent reading a good day? But a life spent reading — that is a good life. A day that closely resembles every other day of the past ten or twenty years does not suggest itself as a good one.

The calming, reassuring words of Dillard provide a reminder that days count, for they are what make up life. But to make each day count, you have to pay attention. Watching days fly by without record is neither a way to remember what happens nor build something worth remembering.

Magnificent creations and minuscule victories alike take time, intention, and work. Stringing those intentions and efforts together is what allows you to take notice, to be mindful of your own capacity for creation.

Her words are dynamic and wise, and they remain relevant no matter what era, and for no matter who reads them. Her contemplation continues:

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time.
Each day is the same, so you remember the series afterward as a blurred and powerful pattern.

When I read these words, I wonder, am I making today worthwhile? Is today a building block, or a plateau that gets me no closer to tomorrow? What will happen tomorrow, as a consequence of what I am doing today?

Those are tough questions, and perhaps they can make someone stare in the mirror in deep contemplation for a little too long.

So then the question becomes how can we refine our creative routines so they aren’t too much hustle, but still allow for a steady and reliable output?

The writer behind The Marginalian, Maria Popova, has written extensively about the routines of prolific creatives. She cites Thomas Edison’s proclamation that “genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.”

But it is not just perspiration but also aspiration, Popova writes, that allows for efforts that feel not just grueling but gratifying. The perspiration becomes worthwhile when the work is inspired, aspirational, and bigger than one’s self.

Consider the work-life wisdom of Alexander Graham Bell — the Scottish inventor who gave us the first working telephone. While he may not have known it, he was an early proponent of the now-popular idea of compounding interest when it comes to work.

“The most successful men in the end are those whose success is the result of steady accretion,” Bell said. “It is the man who carefully advances step by step, with his mind becoming wider and wider…who is bound to succeed in the greatest degree.”

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