I spent some time in a fairly well known startup incubator. What always stood out to me is that the other founders in the program seemed to be more interested in playing the part of a "startup founder" than they did in actually building their companies. They would hold hours and hours of coffee meetings, pitch deck reviews, and presentations, but spend very little time each day actually coding or making sales calls.

I think a lot of this hustle culture comes down to wanting to feel productive, but at the same time wanting to avoid the difficult problems that come along with being an entrepreneur. It's a lot easier to talk about how hard you are working than to actually do the work itself.