How to Avoid the Pressure of Hustle Culture as a Writer
Are you feeling the urgency and pressure to do everything at once? You're not alone! In this episode, I discuss the pressure created by toxic hustle culture--especially prevalent at the start of a new year--and give you tips to protect your writing routine and avoid giving into an urgency that will ultimately lead you to burnout.
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There is a specific kind of energy that comes with the month of January. There is a rush of excitement about the newness and potential of the new year but piggybacked on that is another kind of energy. And to explain what that energy does and how it manifests, I am going to tell you a little bit about a reel that I just watched.
I came in here to record this podcast episode, and as I sat down to start recording, I pulled up my phone and opened Instagram, which, if you're wondering, is just as bad an idea to do before you sit down and record a podcast as it is to do before you sit down to write. Because Instagram, like all social media, is specifically designed to keep you hooked and coming back to the app and distracted from anything that is not Instagram.
Normally, I don't let myself look at social media until I'm done with my podcast and writing work for the day. But for whatever reason, today, I broke my own rule and opened Instagram. And as the app was opening, I was actually thinking to myself, what are you doing? Shut this down, finish your work, and then you could have some time to scroll.
But the first thing that popped up on my screen was a reel from Amie McNee. If you're unfamiliar with Amie, she is @inspiredtowrite on Instagram, which is just the greatest writing account out there. She posts about writing and creativity and art and anointing yourself and trusting your own process and it's raw and real and incredibly inspiring. Definitely worth a follow. She and her partner James also host the Unpublished podcast, which is my absolute favorite podcast.
“Check out Amie on Instagram @inspiredtowrite!”
So I am a big fan. And because I'm a big fan, when I saw her face pop up, I decided I will watch this one video and then I'll get to recording, which is exactly what I did. I watched the one video, I commented on it, and I came back to record. But now I came back to record with a story to illustrate what I wanted to talk about because it turns out that Amie's reel was covering the exact same topic I came in here to record. And that is this energy…this pressure and urgency that comes with the month of January.
In her reel, Amie explained that she had several creative projects lined up for the year of 2024 and some even into 2025. And on one day, she decided she just needed to do them all. She had to put a finger in every single pie and just tackle all her projects at once. And what happened was that led her to freaking out and crying because it's overwhelming. It's too much.
It's a very common thing. I would be willing to bet many of you have been in the same position, especially this time of year, because January and the New Year brings with it an urgency and a pressure and a push to hustle and to do it all and to change it all and to improve everything about your life at one time and to set all the goals and chase them all at the exact same time. And while goal setting can be an incredibly powerful tool that is super motivating and can lead you to the page to create a writing routine, it can also lead to overwhelm and burnout if you let it. So how do you avoid that? Very first, I want you to think about what your priorities are.
“Very first, I want you to think about what your priorities are. What do you want out of this? What is you why?”
Not specific goals, but just your priorities for your life and your writing. What do you want out of this? What is your why? When you know your big priority, then you can set goals that serve that priority. It is really easy, especially as we see so many goal setting posts on social media and blogs and all over the Internet.
It can be really easy to set goals based on what you see others doing or based on what other people tell you you should do. There are a lot of writing coaches out there. There are a lot of publishing “gurus” out there that are telling you what your goals should be in order to be successful. But if they don't know your priorities, they don't know what your ultimate why is, They don't know what you're striving for and why you're writing. They cannot know what goals you should set.
So setting your goals based on what other people are telling you will not align with your why and will not align with what you want to be doing at your core. Because your goals aren't aligned with your priorities, it becomes even easier to give into that pressure to try to do everything at once. While you can write all of your wonderful ideas, you can't write them all at the same time. So focus your goals on your priorities. Make sure the goals are serving your priorities.
And if they aren't, it's okay to rework them until they are or drop them entirely. There is no rule that says you have to stick with a goal just because you set it. If it doesn't align with what you want out of life, you can let it go.
My second tip for setting effective goals that won't lead you to overwhelm and burnout is to focus on the process, not the end result. When you are first thinking of your goals, it's totally fine to look at the end result. Something like, I want to complete this draft by whatever date. I want to write two novels this year. I want to write and polish a screenplay in the first half of the year. Whatever it looks like to you, it is okay to look at the end result when you are first setting the goal. But then break that down into what the process looks like.
Figure out how you can feasibly attain that goal and figure out how you can do it without overwhelming yourself. And that means if you say I want to write a novel by the end of March and you are not the kind of writer who tends to write at that pace, know that you are likely setting yourself up for overwhelm. I'm not saying that you can never write faster, that you can never increase your pace. But if it typically takes you nine months to write a novel and you're suddenly giving yourself three, your process is going to have to look much different and you might struggle with it. Faster writing is something that you typically need to build up to.
But assuming that the end result you want is being set at an obtainable pace, how does the process look? What does your writing schedule look like? When are you sitting down to write? How much time do you have dedicated to it? Are you taking time ahead of time to plot and outline, or do you have thinking time built into your schedule throughout the drafting process? What does the process look like? When you know that, when you set to work on your goal, focus on that process. Do not focus continually on the end result.
When you look forward to your day each day, you can say, My process…I am going to write five hundred words today, or I am going to write every Tuesday and Thursday night. So when that rolls around, I know that everything else is off the table and I'm focused on my writing. Focus on the process and chip away at that. Because when your sole focus is just the end result, it's really easy to let the pressure and urgency of the go go go, hustle hustle hustle, grind grind grind that is so prevalent at all times, but especially at the beginning of the year like this. It's really easy to let that seep into your consciousness and fall into that trap until you overwhelm yourself and burn yourself out. When all you're looking toward is the end result, the tendency to try to push there as fast as possible is intense.
“When all you’re looking at is the end result, the tendency to try to push there as fast as possible is intense.”
And that tends to either lead you to immediate overwhelm in the form of burning out or to immediate overwhelm that manifests as procrastination so you do nothing until the pressure is so high that you have to try to shove it all in at the end and then you burn out.
Focus on your process, not the end goal, and it's easier to ignore that urgency and pressure that's trying to get you to do everything at one time. I hope (four whopping days into this year) that the new year is going well for you, that you are taking care of yourself, that you are not forcing yourself to chase goals that don't align with your priorities, and that you are able to create abundantly without succumbing to the pressure to do it all at the same time.
Until tomorrow, my friends, happy writing.