If you’re a freelancer, or if you spend any portion of your life trying to make money outside of a nine-to-five office job, you know what I mean. The grind, the hustle, the pressure to constantly work to build your brand or work overtime and increase your payout. The exhausting, overwhelming, draining glorification of giving all of yourself to your capitalist endeavours.

I’m not the first to say this, and I won’t be the last: the grind sucks. It’s high-pressure and often involves all of the stuff that is precisely not what you were trying to do when you struck out on your freelancing/artist/whatever journey. It’s the pitching and the social media and the constantly mentioning to everyone you meet that you’re an editor or artist or professional dog-walker.

The pervasiveness of grind culture

Grind culture comes at us from all angles, starting at a very young age. It’s not hard to see how hearing “try your best” as a child (encouraging, uplifting, doesn’t equate “best” with “perfection) can lead to “you can always try harder” or “you aren’t working hard enough.” 

Our goal-oriented mindset starts early and is difficult to escape. Goals are good. Productivity is good. But only up to a point.

There are countless articles on grind and hustle culture. “The ‘Rise and Grind’ of Hustle Culture,” published in Psychology Today, looks at the health effects of grind culture and the damage it does over a long period of time. Earlier this year, GenBiz published “Grind Culture: How It’s Exploiting Millennials.” Some articles blame the workers; better ones blame the system.

From high expectations at work to “toil glamour” on social media, we’re inundated with messaging that we should be working harder and giving our whole selves to hustle culture.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

The struggles of making your “side hustle” your “main hustle”

For freelancers in particular, there’s an inherent amount of hustle and grind involved in transitioning to freelancing full time. Before I was able to shift to editing full-time, I worked as a daycare teacher and edited on my lunch breaks and weekends. Before that, I went to school in the evenings to earn my publishing certificate from Ryerson University while working at a bookstore and editing on the side. 

I don’t know how to shift from a day job to a freelance job without grinding a little. You work in your off-hours to find clients and do your freelancing. You go way over a forty-hour work week as you build up a foundation to safely move from “stable employee” to “unstable freelancer.”

And once you do make that transition, you’ve got to network and build your brand presence and find clients—none of which takes place in your billable hours. When you work for yourself, there’s always going to be a bit of hustle involved.

The goal should be less grind, not more.

Establishing yourself as a freelancer (or artist or DJ or professional dog-walker) is hard, but once you do that, you can actively try to reduce your grinding. Figure out how much work you need to do and money you need to make to maintain the lifestyle you want, and then say no to projects or events that ask you to go beyond that amount.

What was the point of working to exhaustion to get yourself off the ground if you’re still working to exhaustion now? When I was getting my publishing certificate, for several months I’d leave the house in the dark and get home in the dark. I was tired all the time and wasn't getting any joy from editing. I knew I was working towards my goal of being an editor, but I wouldn’t have lasted long if the grind hadn’t let up.

(I want to acknowledge, at this point, the financial privilege of being able to reject the hustle. Many people are forced to work long hours to survive and support their families, and these people are victims of capitalism as a whole, rather than specifically hustle culture.)

How can we move away from grind culture?

For me, the most important thing is to set boundaries and limits. When you work from home and on your own schedule, it’s easy to let yourself slip into the “always on and available” mindset. You have to actively decide not to do that, to instead turn off your freelancing brain and take a break.

I don’t work on evenings or weekends. I don’t answer emails to clients (or, if I can help it, even check them) in my off-hours. I take long weekends when my partner does, and I give myself sick days and mental health days when I need them. I forgive myself for unproductive days and remind myself that I am worth more than my contribution to capitalism.

I also set limits on how much work I accept. I only take on one book project at a time, which means I’m not juggling clients and priorities. I’m able to take on small projects at the same time, like short story clients or video game scripts. Limiting the amount of work I take on means that I have the time to give my clients my best effort when I’m working, and give myself my best effort when I’m not.

Don’t accept jobs that pay poorly or that you don’t want to do. Like many freelancers, I’ve found myself in both situations, and they’re never worth it. Low-paying jobs mean that you have to take on more work to make ends meet, which means more hustling. And when you take jobs that you don’t like, or that you don’t want to do, you’ll wind up procrastinating, which means those jobs will take even longer, which is just the grindiest of grinding.

You are worth more than your hustle.

Rejecting the grind lets you find your way back to the parts of your freelancing (or what have you) that you love. By not overworking myself, I maintain my enthusiasm for words and editing. It’s not a grind: I love it and am thrilled that I get paid to make books and stories the best they can be.

If you are financially able to do so, step back, set boundaries, and work to reclaim the non-hustle parts of your life. Say no to jobs when you’ve already got enough. Take vacations and evenings and weekends. Learn to value the parts of your life that aren’t in service to capitalism.

Letting go of the grind mindset is hard, but it’s the best gift you can ever give yourself.