Demanding a hybrid of service, creativity, hospitality and entrepreneurship, design can be a stress-inducing profession. But it doesn’t have to be. Industry experts share how hustle culture has impacted their well-being, the practices that help them escape the overperformance trap, and what you can do to maintain a healthy mindset from the get-go.

Ashley Wilkins started her interior design career in 2009 working at big-name hospitality firms, first in San Francisco, then New York. At each role, a pattern began to emerge: She and her colleagues toiled until midnight nearly every evening; they worked on weekends and holidays and sacrificed vacation days. At one studio, the owner would leave at dinnertime, then return to the office at 11 p.m. to see who was still there. Employees, meanwhile, ate dinner at their desks. When she requested comp days for the extra time she was putting in at one firm, she was not only rebuffed, but was accused of being a slow worker. It was even common practice for staff designers not to log all of their hours because the actual time it took to complete projects didn’t match up with the billable time that had been determined by leadership at the outset. 

Eventually, Wilkins moved on to another studio, but she found that the culture was much the same, and the hours became untenable. “I was so burned out that my hair started falling out,” she remembers. “I had chronic back pain and had to go to physical therapy.” And she knew she wasn’t the only one feeling the burn. A colleague at one firm was so overworked he was hospitalized; at another, a designer left to become a furniture rep just a few years into her tenure. “She was one of the most promising talents I had interviewed, and I was like, ‘God, she didn’t even make it to 27,’” says Wilkins. “You have all this insane talent and you’re overworking people to the bone, and no one is pushing back on clients in terms of schedules, timelines or fees. I think that’s why people leave the industry—even if they jump around, they see it’s the same everywhere.”