Innovation During Isolation: A Burden, or a Blessing?
Learned a new language?
Gained a new skill?
How many hours have you worked?
How hard have you worked?
How have you impacted your world?
For many people, the current stay-at home orders have become an open invitation for an abundance of free time. While a lot of us are still occupied with work-through-zoom, it seems like we have an unprecedented amount of time for whatever our hearts desire.
However, despite this new entrance of seemingly “free” time, there is now a heavy, pervasive presence of “hustle” culture; one that feels especially pungent during such a uniquely stressful time. Before the weight of the crisis truly set in, I was extremely excited about the fact I could mentally recover from an academically tough semester. With the quarantine, I had plans to use this time to recover by correcting my sleep schedule, continuing new hobbies that were halted by college, and cutting down on my excessive caffeine intake. While I still fully intended to work hard in my classes, I believed that this could be a time about patience and gradual recovery.
My humble hopes for dedicating this time for self-help and recovery were quickly squashed by the overwhelming mindset of “ being at your maximum capacity and productivity during quarantine.” Instagram and Twitter posts that essentially said that the pandemic was not an excuse for inactivity flooded my timelines, ranging from posts about how Shakespeare wrote King Lear during isolation, or how Isaac Newton discovered the mechanisms of gravity during the Great Plague of London. On Instagram, I scrolled past pictures of extremely in-shape fitness bloggers with phrases like, “There are no breaks from fitness” in huge print, or “Quarantine Productivity Planners” from lifestyle bloggers.
I am no stranger to an abundance of competitive and fast-paced work, but my time spent in isolation allowed me to truly see how my relationship with “work” has impacted me. We have been so greatly influenced by a societal culture dominated by exhausting ourselves, and it has great implications regarding how we view our successes and failures. After seeing these posts, I was less curious about how to be productive during quarantine, but more interested in how society has enforced an unhealthy idea of what it truly means to be productive or successful.
Hustle Culture
In my investigation of this phenomenon about prioritizing work above all else, I found a great influx of articles from just one year ago describing the harms of what many describe as “hustle culture”, or the collective mindset that people can only succeed in their profession through exerting themselves at max capacity. Many young people, especially millennials and Gen-Zers, have enforced a strict fear upon themselves that without above one-hundred percent productivity, they will fall behind, or never truly be “enough”. Our inspirations have become figures such as Elon Musk, who emphasizes his workaholic tendencies, and has even stated that, “…nobody ever changed the world on 40 hours a week”. In order to achieve the seemingly perfect image of someone who can tackle anything and excel at everything, we have inevitably sacrificed our physical and mental health. While I do agree that hard work is necessary for completing many tasks and ensuring quality work, the constant pressure and internal voices of “I am not doing enough” and the intense expectations of “hustle culture” lead to an eventual and unavoidable loss of productivity, motivation and passion.
My next question was how this “grinding” culture has intertwined with our unique conditions due to the coronavirus pandemic. Personally, the introduction of these “inspirational” yet pressuring posts only added to my anxiety about the overall pandemic. I found myself to be less productive as I was stricken with the fear and anxiety of my family members or community getting sick, and the addition of personal pressure about productivity and innovation overwhelmed me to an extent where I eventually felt like nothing could be completed.
I took to Twitter and Instagram to discover the stance others took on the topic, as I felt my own struggles came from a very privileged, secure position. Interestingly, it seemed that my feelings and opinions were common, despite the great variation amongst how people have been spending their quarantine. Memes about simply getting through the day confronted the subject in a quirky, light-hearted manner, while others gave their own powerful personal perspectives as essential workers or people dealing with serious mental health conditions that have been greatly impacted from the crisis. A Vogue article titled “Please Stop Telling me to Get a Hobby” tackled the issue with some particularly powerful quotes, my favorite ones being “We are just all doing the best that we can to try to come out of this alive on the other end. There doesn’t need to be any judgment about how other people are getting through,” and “My hobbies include crying and worrying about people.”
I personally wanted to write this article as the pressures of staying productive, innovative, and creative during such an anxious and uncertain time particularly affected me and my mental health. Despite my feelings of loneliness that were invoked when I saw an abundance of posts about people becoming their best selves in quarantine, I found solace in discovering that many people shared my perspective. In a culture where constant productivity is emphasized, it is important to remember that for many people, times like this may not be about thriving, but simply surviving. Rather than forcing myself to portray an image of being the “jack of all trades” of quarantine, I personally felt the most enjoyment and self-accomplishment when I devoted my available time to help support those that are currently struggling during this crisis. After I freed myself from the mindset that I had to leave this period a vastly improved version of myself, I felt a greater, vibrant curiosity about how one can make an impact during this crisis. Rather than letting the fear of failure guide me, I allowed free time to inspire me, and catalyze ideas that I wouldn’t have had time to think about in high-stress environments.
The innovation and structural changes that are sprouting because of our pandemic are ground-breaking and revolutionary, and the stressors of our current environment will no doubt lead to creations that will alter our society. However, these feats are not checkpoints we must complete before things return to normal.
It is okay if the greatest thing you did this period was survive.
Written by May Zhou | IQ Associate
