Some mornings, I wake up and feel like the world has sprinted three miles ahead of me while I was snoring away. It's either AI just wrote one book overnight, a new app went viral, or some 19-year-old just became a millionaire by coding a tool I didn’t even know we needed.
And here I am, sipping coffee while wondering if my daily hustle is still enough.
You know, we used to believe in hard work. “Wake up earlier. Work smarter. Push harder.” But guyyy, the rules of the game are changing and very fast. The hustle culture that used to be celebrated feels almost outdated now because the speed of technology doesn’t just reward hard work anymore, it rewards access, skills, and timing. And not everyone has all three of them.
The truth is, the speed of tech is exciting, but it’s also quite unfair. Individuals who live in places where internet is expensive or slow are already behind. Communities where digital literacy is low are at risk of being left out, if not entirely. Whole states like mine that haven’t invested in infrastructure will have a harder time competing globally and that is because the world won’t slow down to wait for them to catch up.
Try to imagine two students: one with a personal laptop, high-speed Wi-Fi, and exposure to AI tools and the other one who is relying on a cybercafé once a week. No matter how hardworking the second student is, the playing field is not the same. And over time, that gap becomes a reality, like it or not.
This speed also comes with a quiet kind of anxiety. You wake up, and there’s a new skill to learn, a new platform to understand, a new trend to catch before it passes. The pressure is no longer just “work hard” but “work hard and work fast and be tech-savvy.” And if you’re not, you feel like you’re disappearing. Like the world is moving without you.
So, is hustle culture still worth it? I think yes, but with a twist. The new hustle is not just about grinding until 2 a.m. The new hustle is about learning how to adapt. It’s about taking digital literacy seriously, even if it feels really scary because honestly, it is to me. It’s being willing to relearn, unlearn, and reimagine what you thought your career would look like. It’s also about building communities where knowledge is shared. Because, no one should have to figure this out alone. If you feel left behind, it’s not because you’re lazy. It’s because the world is moving faster than ever before. But even if you can’t catch every trend, you can catch one and build from there. You can teach someone else what you have learned. You can speak up for better infrastructure, better schools and better training. Because if individuals, communities, and whole states don’t rise together, the gap between the “digital haves” and “have-nots” will only grow way wider and that’s not just a personal problem, it’s a societal one.
The hustle culture isn’t dead. It’s just evolving. The question isn’t whether you’re hustling hard enough anymore. The question is: Are you hustling in the right direction?
Thanks for reading my blog 💜
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