We’re living in an age ripe for burnout. We’ve experienced hustle culture amid the information age, where an abundance of communication necessitates us to be on high-alert 24/7: the “rise and grind” mentality of constantly aiming for increased productivity.

Some may see never-ending work as a necessary progression toward a more efficient society. In reality, though, we’ve agreed upon a flawed perception of productivity, seeing endless labor as merely beneficial without acknowledging the tradeoff it imposes. As a result, we strive toward quantity over quality and overlook the value of anything that is even slightly too time consuming.

Time is money, after all, and no one wants to waste their time when there is a marketplace of digital platforms designed to do the work for us. Why dine in when you could order food, read papers when you could generate a summary generated by artificial intelligence or even think about grocery shopping when there are products like protein water to simplify the task of hitting your nutritional requirements.

The landscape of modern day innovation is one centered around simplification, convenience and efficiency for the overworked hustlers with an ever-shortening attention span.

The reason why carrying a physical book strikes one as “performative” is precisely because it’s laughable to believe one would take the time to genuinely contemplate the abstract philosophies the novel might entail.

The decline in literacy rates, unfortunately, supports the performative nature of reading nowadays, with around 31% of American fourth grade students in 2024 scoring at or above what the National Assessment for Educational Progress considers to be “proficient,” which is the indicator for “solid academic performance” and demonstrated by competency in understanding challenging subject matters.

It’s natural to determine whether something is worthwhile by considering the time it takes to complete it. But by doing so, we overlook the lessons we learn and the perspectives we gain by doing the strenuous tasks, regardless of the end result.

The more we equate the value of a task to the output it produces, the worse it feels to reach a suboptimal outcome. The fear of disappointment perpetuates an environment of unrealistic expectations and minimal satisfaction in life. We can’t expect to always succeed, and when we don’t, we shouldn’t discredit the time and effort expended.

Byung-Chul Han, a South Korean philosopher, warned of a productivity-obsessed society in his book “The Burnout Society” in 2015. He argued that hustle culture’s inception began in the transition to an “achievement society,” where people embraced a freedom to pursue whatever they want, regardless of societal pressures to conform to professional norms.

Yet, Han argued the overemphasis on productivity and efficiency is to our detriment. What feels like freedom to pursue anything one desires is actually a transfer of external pressures to internal ones. Instead of feeling pressured by others to conform to certain standards, we create standards for ourselves to optimize efficiency and maximize output.

As a college student, it can feel daunting to stop and consider all the different avenues one could take and the different outcomes that may result. I chose philosophy, politics and economics as my major because I knew I wouldn’t be satisfied with a concentration in one discipline. 

Yet as my professional interests have narrowed in these past couple of years, I’ve found myself putting more on my plate instead of trimming things down, adding two minors in separate disciplines that have only spread myself thinner, partly out of the belief that a higher quantity of academic disciplines is what will result in a more fruitful career.

It’s not a novel idea that our fate is in our hands and that, for the most part, the trajectory of our lives and likelihood of success is a direct result of the work we put in. But this does not justify the way that hustle culture has incentivized us to take shortcuts at every turn. 

The rise of AI and its increased accessibility to us has only exacerbated the productivity-optimizing society. Evgeny Morozov, a Belarusian philosopher and writer who discusses the intersection of technology and ethics, describes the consequence of overemphasizing efficiency as “dehumanizing”.

In his book “To Save Everything, Click Here”, published in 2013, Morozov warned of a term he coined “solutionism” — the idea that technology has the capacity to create a frictionless society by solving many of mankind’s problems. The fault here lies in the false belief of the productivity-obsessed that offloading the busy work onto AI will only have beneficial results.

Now that AI tools and technology have become so deeply integrated into our day-to-day activities, the metrics by which we measure our own rate of productivity have been skewed to mirror the rate at which digital tools can achieve the same tasks. We have become one with the tools we employ in our work.

The University’s rollout of AI tools for students not only allows for AI in academic settings, but encourages it. With that, those who choose not to employ AI in their studies risk falling behind, especially at a time when most value quantity over quality.

That quality is thrown out the window when relying on AI tools, as we deprive ourselves of the opportunity to engage in deep, reflective thinking. The loss of problem-solving skills isn’t concerning merely because this creates a landscape ripe for conflict, but because we’ve lost the art of challenging ourselves.

“We end up optimising our behavior within the existing constraints rather than changing the constraints to begin with,” Morozov wrote.

With the green light to use AI in studying, it feels as though the constraints of academic burdens have loosened, as we have more efficiency-maximizing tools at our disposal to get more work done quicker. 

But the issue is that the constraints aren’t the work itself. The biggest hindrance is the hustle culture that necessitates us to overlook all of the tedious tasks and time-consuming endeavors without considering the worthwhile lessons and value derived from them.

We aren’t meant to be cogs in a machine. Just because we have the technology at our disposal to increase our own productivity, doesn’t mean we should. The beauty of life is found in every moment leading up to an outcome, not just the final product. A suboptimal result should not erase the moments cherished along the way.

For those reasons, find the value in doing the busy work. Stop equating your success to the sum of expeditious accomplishments. Allow yourself the rewards that come from the hustle itself.