Stronger than life hacks
Culture tells us to revere new technologies the same way it tells us that work, success, money, and sacrifice are next to godliness.
I just finished reading Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport, and something he says about technology (mainly our smart phones) applies to work/life balance and hustle culture as well.
He wrote,
“…Small changes are not enough to solve our big issues with new technologies. The underlying behaviors we hope to fix are ingrained in our culture, and they’re backed by powerful psychological forces that empower our base instincts. To reestablish control, we need to move beyond tweaks and instead rebuild our relationship with technology from scratch, using our deeply held values as a foundation.” - Cal Newport, Digital Minimalism
I’d rephrase it like this:
“…Small changes are not enough to solve our big issues with work/life balance. The underlying behaviors we hope to fix are ingrained in our culture, and they’re backed by powerful psychological forces that empower our base instincts. To reestablish control, we need to move beyond tweaks and instead rebuild our relationship with work from scratch, using our deeply held values as a foundation.”
Culture tells us to revere new technologies the same way it tells us that work, success, money, and sacrifice are next to godliness.
There are tips and life hacks for both: for technology, a tip might be to turn off notifications on all your 65 phone apps. For creating boundaries around work, it might be blocking out “me time” right after work.
Both are useful suggestions and will help some people, but they don’t necessarily change the way we think about our phones or work/life balance.
Do we really need all 65 phone apps in the first place? Even without the notifications, we’re tempted to check for new messages whenever our brains get a bit bored. During “me time,” most of us will still think about work because it’s our biggest driver. (It's not what we say is our biggest driver, but our actions declare otherwise).
The forces of culture are just much stronger than life hacks.
Like Cal wrote, to make real changes to lifestyle, we have to go deeper and bigger than hacks, tricks, and tweaks. It has to come from conscious decisions we make about how we’ll spend our time according to our values.
Minimalism gave me a good starting point for assessing my life based around my values. It gave me a completely new frame of reference for making decisions about my life.
I have a feeling there are many other ways to assess your life differently, framing it around good health, spirituality, adventure, helping your community, or other standard human values. With practice, dedication, and trial and error, can actually overcome the immense power of hustle culture on how we spend our days.
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