Locking in is overrated

By Eliza Bellones

It is so easy to feel like we are falling behind. Perhaps this is why “locking in” has become such a common phrase. You hear it before any moment that feels important enough to change your life, the looming reminder that there is always more to do, more to achieve, more of yourself to give. Somewhere along the way, we started believing that the answer is always to work harder.

And sometimes, it is. There are dreams that cannot be reached without sacrifice and persistence. There are people who do not have the privilege of slowing down, people with families to support, bills to pay, degrees to finish, responsibilities that cannot be postponed. For many people, survival itself demands constant movement. It would be dishonest to ignore that reality; not everyone can afford to pause.

But somewhere along the way, we began to confuse working hard with never stopping at all. We started to believe that exhaustion is proof of ambition, that being constantly busy is evidence of worth. There is almost something performative about it now—the late nights, the endless to-do lists, the pride people take in saying they have barely slept. We glorify burnout as though it is something noble, as though running ourselves into the ground is the only way to prove we deserve success. The problem is not hard work itself. The problem is that we have built an entire culture around the idea that our value lies only in what we produce.

It is exhausting to live this way, to feel as though every second of your life must justify itself. There is also a quiet cruelty in the language of “locking in.” It suggests that there is no room for softness, no space for uncertainty, grief, joy, or simply being human. It teaches us to treat ourselves like machines, valuable only when we are functioning at full capacity. But people are not machines. We are not built to exist in a constant state of productivity without consequence. Eventually, something gives. Maybe it is your motivation. Maybe it is your health. Maybe it is the growing emptiness of realizing that you have spent so much time chasing achievement that you no longer know who you are outside of it.

To say that “locking in is overrated” is not to say that hard work is unnecessary. It is not an excuse for complacency or irresponsibility. There are seasons in life that demand more from us, moments when we do have to stay focused and push through. But a life built entirely around productivity is not a sustainable one. There must be room for pause, for unbridled joy that serves no purpose beyond making life feel lighter.

Because if all we ever do is work toward the next milestone, the next achievement, the next version of ourselves, we risk waking up one day and realizing we have forgotten how to live in the present. We risk becoming so consumed with building a life that we never actually allow ourselves to experience it.

Perhaps the goal is not to reject hard work, but to stop worshipping it. To understand that our worth is not measured by how tired we are, how busy we seem, or how much we can endure before breaking. There is dignity in effort, but there is also dignity in rest. There is value in ambition, but there is also value in slowing down long enough to remember that life is not something to be optimized every second of the day. Sometimes, the healthiest thing we can do is stop “locking in” for a moment and allow ourselves to simply be.