Wake Up at 3:52AM or Fall Behind: Optimized to Exhaustion

Hustle culture feels impossible to escape on social media. One of the most viral examples is Ashton Hall’s morning routine, which flooded Instagram and TikTok with his extreme structure and discipline. Ashton walks viewers through a highly curated 3:52am morning routine filled with workouts, ice baths, journaling, banana skin care, and constant self-optimization. On the surface, the content serves as a visual reminder of discipline, ambition, and control.

When viewed through a Marxist lens, his routine reinforces a belief system where personal worth is tied to constant labor and self-discipline.

As Sellnow explains, popular culture texts often operate as occluded preferred readings and messages that appear empowering while still protecting dominant ideologies (Sellnow, p. 119). Ashton Hall’s routine fits this idea well. The content puts success as the result of individual effort, sacrifice, and relentless self-management. It ignores the bigger economic pressures that push people to hustle nonstop. Rather than questioning things like job instability or burnout, everything is framed as an individual responsibility.

This reflects a larger Marxist critique of capitalism, where productivity becomes a moral value. In hustle culture, rest is framed as laziness, and burnout is treated as a personal flaw rather than a systemic issue. Ashton's morning routine normalizes the idea that every moment of the day should be optimized. Even activities meant to promote wellness or self-care are turned into another form of labor.

What’s especially interesting is how this content turns life into a performance. Hall is documenting everything, branding it, and selling it as a lifestyle others should aspire to. This mirrors Marx’s idea that capitalism turns human labor into something abstract and detached from the person doing it. In this case, even identity and daily routines become commodities. Productivity itself becomes the product.

Hustle culture often disguises itself as motivation, but it ultimately tells us that success is available to anyone who works hard enough. This ignores differences in class, access, stability, and privilege. Like many pop culture texts, Ashton's content feels inspirational while quietly reinforcing systems that benefit from overwork and self-exploitation.

Ashton Hall behavior is neither right or wrong. His popularity actually reveals a lot about our culture. If pop culture shapes what feels normal and desirable, then I believe hustle culture deserves closer scrutiny. Maybe the real question isn’t how early we wake up or how productive we are, but why exhaustion has become something we admire in the first place.