How Hustle Culture Makes Habit Building Harder

The gist: Discover how hustle culture complicates habit building and learn neurodivergent-friendly strategies to make it easier.

Have you ever felt overwhelmed when someone says “just turn it into a habit” like that’s the easiest thing in the world?

You’re not alone.

Sure, habits can be powerful.

They can make routines easier, reduce decision fatigue, and create real, lasting change.

But here’s the problem with advice like that:

Building habits is nowhere near easy enough to justify a “just” in front of it.

Especially for neurodivergent and chronically ill humans like us.

It's just one more way that hustle culture and toxic productivity have completely ruined something that should be helpful. Instead of making life easier, habit-building is now loaded with pressure, shame, and unrealistic expectations.

It’s become a moral test, not a tool.

Habit building is already hard, and Hustle Culture only makes it harder...until we’re practically set up to fail.

So let’s talk about why building new habits can feel so hard, and what we can do to make it easier.

Building habits is actually hard

People act like turning something into a habit is as simple as deciding to do so—like you can wave a magic wand and poof, your desired behavior becomes automatic. 🪄

But that's not at all how our brains work.

Building a sustainable habit requires strategy, preparation, and experimentation. And that takes effort and time.

You need to discover the right cues and rewards that work for YOUR brain.

And that’s going to be different for every habit. BJ Fogg’s B=MAP (behavior = motivation + ability + prompt) formula shows that every habit requires a different strategy, based on things like your motivation and how easy the habit is for you.

Then even after you've figured out your perfect habit recipe, you still need to put in a lot of “reps” before it actually feels like a habit.

You have to actually DO the thing repeatedly, even when it feels difficult and very much non-habitual. Getting yourself to do something when it’s not yet a habit is the only way to eventually make it a habit. And again, that’s hard!

This process of experimentation is exactly why "just make it a habit" is such frustrating advice.

We have unrealistic expectations

Another reason habit building feels so hard? We set ourselves up for failure with completely unrealistic expectations.

Instead of thinking about our current, present capabilities, we…

• Expect ourselves to be able to build multiple big habits at once.
• Start with the actual habit we want to build, instead of an easier version of it.
• Get inspired by other people’s "perfect morning routine" and try to copy it step-for-step.
• Imagine our "future self" will have boundless motivation, time, and energy.

Most of this is because Hustle Culture's "go big or go home" mindset has infected our approach to habits.

Instead of acknowledging our current reality and taking small steps towards where we want to be, we expect perfection from ourselves from the start.

But here's the thing:

Your future self will still be dealing with the same constraints as your current self.

They'll still have the same number of spoons, the same 24 hours in a day, and the same need for rest and recovery.

Building habits needs to work within those real-world limitations, not ignore them.

We’re thinking about habits wrong

Another thing making habit building harder than it needs to be is how Hustle Culture has ruined how we think about habits in the first place.

The biggest way this shows up?

Tying habits to morality or self-worth.

Self-help and productivity culture have convinced us that our worth is somehow tied to how many daily habits we've built. That people with "better" habits are somehow better people.

But that's complete nonsense.

Good habits aren't a measure of your character or worth.

They're just tools to help you do the things you want or need to do more easily.

Another issue is that a lot of us think of habits in a super all-or-nothing way.

That if you don’t literally do the thing every single day, in the same time, place, and way, it’s not actually an established habit. It’s a failed one.

But I’ve learned to think of habits and behaviors exist on more of a habit gradient, from completely sporadic to fully habitual, with lots of room in between.

Looking at habits this way takes off a lot of pressure and makes the whole process feel more doable.

We try to build the wrong habits

Another big reason habit building feels so hard? We're often trying to build the wrong habits in the first place.

Instead of thinking strategically about what habits would actually be practical and helpful for us, we get caught up in what we think we "should" be doing.

Maybe we see someone else on social media and get inspired by something they’re doing. (An example: last week I watched a vlog of someone going swimming and it looked so fun, I’m now convinced I must build a weekly lap swimming habit!)

Another common mistake is trying to jump into huge habits right away, instead of starting small.

For example, getting the idea to start meditating for 30 minutes every day when you’ve never even tried it before, instead of starting with a minute or two and extending the duration over time.

Your habits need to meet you where you are NOW, not where you want to be eventually.

And I don't mean where you are now on a good day.

To build a habit effectively, it needs to be small and easy enough that you can do it even on bad, low energy days too. Maybe not the WORST days, but definitely the regular bad ones.

And remember: the most effective habits aren't necessarily the most impressive or Instagrammable ones.

They're the ones that actually work for YOUR life and YOUR needs.

We have emotional baggage about habits

Let's be real: most of us have messy and complicated feelings about habits at this point.

Maybe you've tried and failed to build certain habits multiple times before. (Personally, I’ve lost count of how many times I tried to become a "morning person" before accepting it just wasn't for me.)

Or maybe you struggle with rejection-sensitive dysphoria, which makes the thought of yet another failure feel terrifying.

And when you combine that with how Hustle Culture has moralized habits and turned them into measures of worth? Whew. 😬

It's no wonder many of us would rather avoid building new habits altogether.

The fear of failing feels worse than the discomfort of not having the habit in the first place.

But avoiding habits completely means missing out on a tool that could genuinely make your life easier.

The solution isn't to avoid habits completely. Instead, we can try to to develop a healthier mindset about them.

We rely too much on motivation (and the wrong kinds of it)

Finally, the last thing making habit building so hard is that we focus too much on willpower and motivation.

Many people think you just need enough motivation to brute-force push yourself until a habit becomes automatic.

But first of all, that’s not how motivation works when it comes to building habits.

And second of all, brute-force isn’t an effective or sustainable source of motivation anyway. 🤷‍♀️

As BJ Fogg talks about in Tiny Habits, motivation is the part of habit building you want to rely on least, since it’s the least predictable and controllable element of his formula.

But too often, it’s all someone’s relying on at all.

Instead of trying to force motivation, it’s way easier to tweak other elements of the formula (the prompt or ability), or test out a different habit entirely, one that’s more intrinsically motivating.

And instead of always jumping to things like shame, guilt, and punishment as self-motivators, we need to approach habits with more self-compassion and encouragement.

It doesn’t need to be so hard

Building habits doesn't need to be complicated.

Without the pressure of unrealistic expectations and moral judgments, habits become what they should be: simple tools to make life easier.

When building new habits, focus on self-compassion, start small, and choose what works for YOUR brain.

Remember: habits aren't about becoming "better" - they're about making your life easier and brighter.

And if you liked this post, you'll also love:

• Gentle Goal-Setting: Set Goals Without Burnout Or Shame
• The Fresh Start Effect: Hack Your Motivation (Any Time of Year)
• Shine Over Shame: How to Build Habits with ADHD