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Advancing your career used to mean working long hours, communicating formally, and following strict hierarchies. Baby boomers and Gen Xers placed a high value on loyalty, job stability, and climbing the corporate ladder. They followed clear and traditional career paths, prioritized titles, and often stayed with one company for many years. Overworking, sacrificing personal time, and pushing through burnout were just part of the hustle. The same has been true for many millennials.

Gen Z is changing the paradigm. By 2030, Gen Z will account for 30% of the workforce, and this new wave of workers is replacing the hustle culture with work-life balance, mental health, and flexibility.

Only 36% of Gen Z feel “very engaged” at work (13 points behind the rest of the U.S. workforce), and 91% have faced at least one mental health challenge or burnout. They now expect employers to step up and support them.

Upwork, an online marketplace for hiring skilled freelancers, explains anti-hustle culture and how Gen Z is reshaping the modern work ethic by rebelling against constant grind, avoiding burnout, and prioritizing their well-being.

What is the anti-hustle culture, and where did it come from?

The anti-hustle culture is a mindset that opposes the idea that success requires nonstop busyness and sacrifice, which can lead to burnout. This mindset promotes a more balanced approach to work by prioritizing mental health, self-care, wellness, work-life balance, and overall employee well-being over the constant hustle.

The anti-hustle culture didn’t come out of nowhere. For decades, older generations believed in doing whatever it took to move up, including staying loyal to one company (the antithesis of today’s side-hustle culture), working overtime, and putting career first. Now, younger workers, especially Gen Z, are challenging that model and redefining what success looks like.

Gen Z is looking for work that feels meaningful, offers flexibility, and supports their values and well-being. They’re working to live, not living to work, and for them, work-life balance often ranks as high as pay.

Social media trends

Recent trends like “Bare Minimum Monday” and “Lazy Girl Jobs” across podcasts and social media platforms like TikTok have helped fuel the anti-hustle culture.

Bare Minimum Monday encourages workers to start the week slowly by focusing only on essential tasks. The idea is to ease into Monday, reduce anxiety, and avoid burnout.

Lazy Girl Jobs, a term popularized by TikToker Gabrielle Judge, promotes low-stress, well-paying roles that offer flexibility, better work-life balance, and more job satisfaction, without g

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Protein is suddenly everywhere: in ramen, ice cream, pizza, and even soda. Celebs are getting in on the niche protein action, too. Just this year, Khloe Kardashian launched Khloud popcorn, and Serena Williams signed on as health advisor for wellness brand Ritual.

They’re all part of a wave that’s upending the $56 billion protein market. While 70% of U.S. adults actively try to consume protein, according to a 2025 International Food Information Council survey, the forms they’re choosing look nothing like the chalky shakes and dense bars that dominated for years.

On Shopify stores alone, protein coffee sales exploded 507% in the first half of 2025 compared to the same period in 2024, as traditional shakes plummeted 40%. Entrepreneurs are completely reinventing the protein category with fresh angles. But the brands thriving today aren’t the ones blindly chasing what’s hot. Instead, they’re those led by founders solving genuine problems.

The flavor-first philosophy: Ending chalky aftertaste

When other protein brands were focused on cramming as much protein as possible into their products, Aamir Malkani was obsessing over something else entirely: why everything tasted so terrible.

“Protein products have this reputation,” he says. “People buy them for what they do, not because they enjoy them.” This insight led him to create protein snacks people would actually crave, not merely tolerate.

Malkani launched Plant Up with a line of high-protein plant-based frozen appetizers, followed by healthy snack puffs. His approach flips the category on its head: flavor first, health benefits second.

Prepared protein foods are seeing a 194% year-over-year increase in sales among businesses using the Shopify platform, and Malkani’s products are riding that trend. But what if the protein mania is just a fad? “We talk about ourselves as a functional foods company, not just protein,” he says. “Protein is selling today, so we’re doubling down. Maybe next year it’s creatine or collagen.” (Collagen product sales are up 105% year over year. Maybe he’s onto something.)

Plant Up’s protein puffs eliminated the chalky aftertaste that plagued the category. Though they’re plant-based and protein-packed, the brand chose not to lead with labels that may alienate average consumers. The flavor-first approach has propelled the brand into over 1,600 Canadian stores in three years, with U.S. expansion set for early 2026.

The viral pivot: Turning family drama into brand gold

“93% of drink businesses fail. I pray for you.” It wasn’t the pep talk most founders hope for.

When Vy Cutting received this text from her mother about her protein soda startup, she did what any savvy entrepreneur would do: She posted it on TikTok. The family drama went viral, propelling Feisty Drinks into U.K. retailer Selfridges almost overnight.

Feisty’s viral mother-daughter exchange wasn’t an isolated moment. “My mom thought I was going through a life crisis and was not on board with this

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In late spring last year, Betty Hodgson, president of the Nova Scotia non-profit group Friends of the Pugwash Estuary, sat in the bow of a small boat with Kristina Boerder, a marine biologist at Dalhousie University. As they maneuvered the dinghy through the shallow estuarine waters that flow undaunted into Canada’s Northumberland Strait, the pair leaned over the boat’s edge, scanning below the rippling surface for any sign of silvery-green ribboned blades of eelgrass. What they were really looking for was hope.

Living in shallow water along the intertidal coastlines and estuaries of more than 190 countries, eelgrass, or Zostera marina, is part of the seagrass family of plants and the most common seagrass species in Canada.

Despite covering just 0.2% of the sea floor, seagrasses account for an estimated 10% of all the carbon stored by the world’s oceans, Reasons to be Cheerful reports. They are also able to capture carbon from the atmosphere up to 35 times faster than tropical rainforests such as the Amazon.

Seagrasses’ ability to store carbon so successfully has led the U.N. to term them a “secret weapon in the fight against global heating.”

Globally, however, seagrasses have declined almost 30% since the late 1800s. At current rates, it’s estimated that a football field’s worth of seagrasses disappears every second.

Scientists don’t yet know all the reasons for the plant family’s decline, but they do know some of the major stressors, not least climate change and its associated impacts such as warming sea waters, ocean acidification and increasingly intense storm surges. Boerder, lead scientist with Dalhousie University’s Community Eelgrass Restoration Initiative (CERI), points to Hurricanes Fiona in 2022 and Dorian in 2019 that swept along the coastline of Nova Scotia and uprooted entire eelgrass meadows.

There are other factors at play too, including seagrass wasting disease, which wiped out up to 60% of eelgrass in the Pacific Northwest between 2013 and 2015, and the invasive European green crab, which uproots meadows while burrowing and feeding.

These pressures are compounded by human activities such as coastal development, overfishing and pollution. The result is that this once thriving climate hero is up against the ropes.

It’s something Hodgson knows well. “Local people will call me,” she says, “and say, ‘I always cut eelgrass for my garden, and there’s no eelgrass anymore!”

But Hodgson also recalls the moment that the fate of eelgrass in the Pugwash Estuary changed for the better. Looking over the side of the dinghy that spring day, she spotted one plant. It was all the proof she and Boerder needed to know eelgrass was still able to grow in these waters.

Following that sighting, CERI and Friends of the Pugwash Estu

Courtesy of Providence Foundation

Dexter Hall, interim executive director of the Providence Foundation of San Francisco, often sits in meetings listening to data on the poverty, housing issues, and economic disparities that the organization takes on daily. “I don’t have to imagine who those numbers represent,” Hall tells The Economic Hardship Reporting Project and The Chronicle of Philanthropy. “I think: I am data. Every statistic someone reads off a slide is someone I’ve known.”

Born in East Waco, Texas, and raised in East Oakland, Hall grew up with his siblings surrounded by homelessness and financial instability. “My current knowledge of economic data now tells me what I didn’t know then: We were poor. We lived below the poverty line. But because of my mother’s love and the strength of our community, it never felt that way. We helped each other with what we had. We didn’t have much, but we had each other.”

Hall’s mother — whom he reverently refers to as “Mrs. Mildred Y. Hall” — worked as a certified nurse assistant. She later went back to school and became a dietary supervisor at a convalescent home. At home, she seemed to work miracles with what little the family had, he says. “I watched her stretch money for two weeks just to make sure she had bus fare to get to work. … She gave everything she had to make sure we had what we needed.”

The family typically lived in tight quarters but didn’t hesitate to give anyone in need a bed or the couch. “We made space where there was none,” Hall says.

These experiences constantly flash through Hall’s mind at Providence, particularly when conversations focus on those navigating homelessness or facing food insecurity. Often, these conversations can be abstract and lack understanding of what it means to live on the edge of society. Hall adds a needed reality check.

“I bring that lived knowledge to every decision,” he says, “because this work isn’t theoretical — it’s personal.”

Partners and Architects

Hall is an evangelist for the idea that organizations serving the vulnerable — such as those living in poverty, struggling to find housing, managing addiction, or experiencing domestic violence — should hire people with lived experience.

“People aren’t problems to be solved — they’re partners in their own transformation,” he says. “When leaders reflect the communities they serve, they listen differently, design differently, and deliver differently. They know how to ask without judgment, support without pity, and challenge with love. People with lived experience aren’t at the margins of this work — they are its architects.”

Team members with lived experience also are more likely to establish trust with clients. “As an immigrant, I deeply understand how overwhelming it can feel to start over in a big city like New York,” says Marlyn Navarro, a program coordinator at Bottomless Closet who immigrated to the United States

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What do people actually ask a AI telehealth platform for?

Prescription patterns paint a portrait of a nation managing pain, chronic disease, and the complications of modern life.

It’s a question that reveals more than just consumer preferences. In an era when healthcare access is increasingly strained — appointment wait times stretching to weeks, physician shortages mounting, costs rising — where people turn when barriers are lowered says something important about unmet needs.

Prescription data from Doctronic, an AI telehealth platform, offers a window into the health concerns driving Americans to seek care — and the patterns reveal clues about the state of American health and the future of healthcare delivery.

Pain relief dominates. Ibuprofen ranks as the single most prescribed medication on the platform, with Tylenol close behind in second place. Together, they represent the largest share of all prescriptions written.

Chronic disease management follows. Levothyroxine for thyroid disorders, metformin for diabetes, and atorvastatin for cholesterol round out the top five. Omeprazole for acid reflux ranks in the top ten.

Then there are the surprises: Magnesium ranks among the most prescribed items on the platform — a supplement, not a medication, appearing alongside drugs used to treat serious chronic conditions.

Taken together, the data creates a snapshot of American health in 2025 — and what people are willing to seek care for when the traditional barriers to access are removed.

A Nation in Pain

The dominance of pain relievers at the top of the list is striking but not surprising. Pain has become one of the defining health challenges of modern American life.

According to the CDC, an estimated 51.6 million U.S. adults experienced chronic pain in 2021 — roughly one in five Americans. Of those, 17.1 million experienced high-impact chronic pain, the kind that substantially restricts work and daily activities. Pain is now the leading reason Americans seek medical care.

The placement of ibuprofen and Tylenol as the top two prescriptions suggests pain management is a primary driver bringing people to AI telehealth platforms. For many patients, managing chronic pain involves ongoing access to anti-inflammatories and analgesics — not as a cure, but as a way to function day to day.

The pattern may also reflect convenience and timing. Pain is often episodic and unpredictable — a flare-up that doesn’t align with available appointment slots, a weekend injury, a headache that needs addressing now rather than in three weeks when the next opening appears on a provider’s calendar.

Traditional healthcare struggles with this temporal mismatch. The average wait for a new patient appointment has risen to 26 days, and even establ