Hustle culture is embarrassing.
Gary Vee and company shout "nobody will outwork me" and "I'm not afraid to die on a treadmill." They tell you they wake up at 4:00, down a protein shake, and grind until their eyes bleed. Their social channels flood with content whose only message is: you're not doing enough. You're lazy. You're weak.
The same people sell online courses.
The hustle content industry works on one simple trick: make someone feel inadequate, then sell them the solution. "Buy my book. Come to my event. Buy my NFT." The cheapest trick in the self-help industry. And it works, because we all doubt ourselves.
I was caught in it too, for years.
Everything had to be a business
My daily life looked like this:
- A festival (which I eventually canceled)
- A DJ booking agency, placing DJs and karaoke hosts in bars
- A large restaurant chain as a client, lots of hours, laughable billing rates
- Photography, which I kept forcing into being a job
- Nice Events, corporate and wedding gigs
- Smaller projects I didn't even bother to count
It all sounded like what an "entrepreneur is supposed to do." Side hustles, passive income, many irons in the fire. I had fully absorbed the hustle mentality: the more you do, the tougher you are. The more projects spinning, the more successful you are.
Nothing was properly under control. Everything was half-done, and I was exhausted.
Burnout isn't a badge of honour
I used to think burnout was a myth. Something people talk about on podcasts but that doesn't actually touch "tough people." I thought it was weakness, something that happens to people who just can't push hard enough.
Then it hit me.
Suddenly everything required effort, including the DJ gigs, photography, and coming up with ideas that I loved. I had no energy left. I woke up tired, went to bed tired, and the day's only goal was to get through it.
Hustle culture has turned burnout into some kind of badge of honour. "Look how hard I worked, I burned myself out." That's sick. In my case, burnout showed that I hadn't managed to limit my workload.
Matt D'Avella described his own state like this:
"I've been having pretty bad anxiety the last two weeks, like debilitating. I've been thinking about quitting YouTube. I'm not saying I have full burnout, but it's close."
When even the guy who makes productivity videos for a living is broken, there's something wrong with the whole framework.
What I cut
I canceled the festival. That was the first big decision.
I shut down the DJ booking agency. Matching bars with karaoke hosts wasn't my passion, it was just one more business I had invented because "that's what you're supposed to do."
I terminated the contract with the large restaurant chain. The scariest decision, because it was a big chunk of my income. But the billing rates were laughable and the hours were insane. I was selling my time too cheaply for the work to be profitable.
I returned photography to being a hobby. Not everything needs to become a job. Photography was something I loved that I almost ruined by turning it into performance. Now I shoot for myself again, and it feels good.
What remained
Biletti. This is what I believe in. We're building the best ticketing and event platform with a team that genuinely understands sustainable work. Burnout isn't glorified there, we focus on the right things and do them properly. That kind of work environment is rare.
I kept Nice Events limited to DJ gigs at corporate events and weddings.
What happened when I quit almost everything
I do less and get more done. When you're not bouncing between five companies and ten projects, you can focus.
I spend more time with my son. We moved to Laajasalo, surrounded by nature. It was the best decision in a long time.
I sleep better. Recovery is ongoing, but the direction is right. I know what it feels like to be broken, and I don't want to go back there.
What I learned
Cal Newport wrote a book called Slow Productivity. Three principles: do fewer things at once, work at a natural pace, and obsess over quality.
"When your only productivity tool is to act like a human battering ram, the consequences are inevitable. Burnout, anxiety, depression — a life that serves your work rather than the other way around."
Newport says that in knowledge work there's no clear measure of productivity. In industrial work you knew how many widgets came out per hour. But when you do cognitive work, the only remaining metric became "visible busyness." Emails, meetings, constant hustle. Newport's term for this is pseudo-productivity.
Matt D'Avella tested slow productivity in practice. He quit 90% of his work and focused only on long-form YouTube videos:
"I now generally work 5-6 hours a day, which feels insane compared to the past. But here's the important thing: a slower pace hasn't made me less ambitious. It's made me more focused."
He also described the quality of his work:
"I got comments that these are my best videos ever. But that wasn't the most important thing. The most important thing was that I was proud of what I made — instead of just rushing from project to project."
Every project brings more admin
When you do too many things, nothing gets finished. Every project brings extra admin, such as email threads, meetings, and reminders. Cal Newport sums it up:
"When you say yes to too many things, most of your day goes to paying the overhead tax. The actual work might take 10 hours, but the hidden costs double it."
I was bad at saying no. Now I'm trying to be less bad.