4 Highly Toxic Habits Most People Mistake as Positive

You might want to get rid of some.

We live in a world that has not only normalized but also positivized toxicity.

So it’s easy to mistake highly toxic habits as positive and fall prey to them. I want to share 4 such habits with you.

I also want to convince you to get rid of these — so I’ll explain my rationale, go over my experience, and back my claims with scientific evidence.

Hustling Hard

With the rise of the noxious hustle culture, working all day every day has come into vogue.

Hustle late into the night. Start hustling again early in the morning. Take only 5-minute breaks. Hustle. Kill your social life. Hustle. Sleep-deprived? No problem, keep hustling.

But this is detrimental to your health. With research directly linking overwork and depression, it’s no wonder that worldwide depression is at an all-time high. What’s even worse is that—Japan, notorious for long working hours, reported more suicide deaths than even pandemic-related ones.

Did I mention how people are literally dying from overwork? It’s so rampant that the Japanese and Chinese have legal terms for it — “Karoshi” and “Guolaosi” respectively.

Moreover, overwork is counterproductive. Research has found leisure to be crucial for productivity — it rejuvenates the brain, restores focus, and improves your mood. Also, there’s only so long our brains can remain focused.

So, 3 hours of focused work interspersed with an hour of leisure easily beats a 7-hour work stretch.

During my initial writing days, I’d spend between 6 to 8 hours every single day — Staring at an empty draft. Writing. Rewriting. Burning out. Browsing through YouTube. Writing again. Rewriting again. Burning out again.

And the output? 7 to 8 subpar articles that each got a few tens of views per month. Now, I achieve all my writing in just a few hours on the weekends and leisurely edit on the weekdays.

And the result is 14 to 17 quality articles that often get thousands of views.

So, with productivity, less is better.

And even then, work isn’t life — draw the line and enjoy the other aspects as well.

Being Polite at The Cost of Authenticity

We all know the adage, “Nice guys finish last” and there’s a good reason for that.

The traditional “nice” guy goes out of his way to be “nice” to women while masking his ulterior motives. To put it crudely, it’s like saying — “Hey, I took you out to fancy restaurants and showered you with gifts, so now give me sex in exchange.”

Not just women, nobody likes ulterior motives. It’s outright creepy. We are wired to adore authenticity and despise fake people.

I’m all for being kind and helpful. But plastering a fake smile and begrudgingly doing a favor?

Honest rudeness is much better than masked politeness.

So, be it your boss whose favor you want to curry or the hot coworker that gets your heart beating like a drum, don’t grovel or act obsequiously.

Help when you can and want to. Say no when you can’t. Show your displeasure when offended. Offer genuine appreciation to the deserving ones. Take rightful credit. Justly accept blame.

All in all, be real. Millennia of evolution has given us the unconscious ability to detect fakeness instantly.

Put-Down Humor

A good sense of humor is a charming quality. Everyone loves a good time, but at the cost of someone?

The entertainment of my middle-school bullies came at the cost of driving my self-esteem to rock bottom. And my high-school friends' group? We amused ourselves by making each other feel miserable.

Put-down humor is a negative-sum game—for a few weak laughs, you ruin someone’s mood, risk antagonizing them, and possibly even cripple their self-esteem.

Even if you meant it to be “harmless”, it can come off as deliberate, hurtful, and stemming from a personal antipathy. So, avoid all put-down humor.

But what makes doing that hard is the fact that toxic humor can be quite subtle. A good litmus test is — to check if the butt of the joke concerns someone’s self-esteem:

• Physical Attributes: Complexion, height, weight, health, diseases, ethnicity, body, disabilities, etc. are the deepest components of any person’s self-esteem.
• Financial Conditions: There's a reason behind the famous adage, “Never ask a man his wage and a woman her age”
• Traumatic or Severely Embarrassing Experiences: Post Trauma Stress Disorder is real so never bring up someone’s debilitating experiences—bullying, sexual abuse, domestic violence, crippling embarrassments, etc.
• Social Circumstances: Dating success, popularity, number of friends, or anything else concerning social status.

These aren’t rules but guidelines — tread carefully along these lines based on how intimate you are with someone.

With strangers, stand a pole away from anything even remotely concerning self-esteem. With best friends, well, you know them best, so you decide.

Try as much as possible to steer clear of demeaning jokes, ridicule, or stabby teasing, and embrace nourishing humor instead — witty quips, inside jokes, puns, memes, and self-deprecating jokes.

Laugh with others, not at others.

Being Helpful at The Cost of Your Own Self

On the other side of the nice-guy-coin are people who are actually nice — to a fault, in fact.

I’m talking about the ones who just cannot say no. No matter what you ask of them, they’ll accede. In an ideal world, such people would be treasured and respected,

But in our world, they’re the doormats that anyone passing by will brutally step on.

Also, just like how we consign worn-out doormats to the trash bin — when you need help, the people you’ve helped will not come flocking. My grandfather’s death drilled this into my head.

All his life, he had often sacrificed his own time and priorities to help others. But when he came down with the virus and subsequently died? Very few came to our help.

So respect your own time and priorities. Nobody else will.

If you can help, do so, but if you can’t—say no with no hesitation. Everyone respects people that respect themselves.

Be a door, not a doormat — swing open only when you want and can. Don’t get stepped on by every Joe and Mike walking by.

To Summarize

• Work in focused stretches amply laced with leisure. Spend time with friends and family. Sleep at least 7 hours. Exercise. Enjoy solitude. Develop hobbies.
• Be authentic first, polite next. Say no when you mean to. Disagree when you actually disagree. Appreciate when you feel like doing so. Express displeasure when offended.
• Engage in nourishing, not toxic humor. Steer clear of any humor that involves putting someone down. Laugh with others, not at others.
• Be a door, not a doormat. Respect your own time and priorities. Help when you can. But when you can’t or don’t want to? Freely say no.

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this, consider joining A Better Life. It’s free! You’ll receive my best posts and a weekly Sunday Self-Scaler to kick your week off to a splendid start.