Your brain has been fried by hustle culture.
I used to spend a lot of time, hours a week, at university just hanging out with people instead of working hard on my career (the opposite of hustle culture). The vast majority of these friends entered a relationship and/or moved far away, and I don't see them anymore (we've also become different people since then). I've since focused more on my career—no longer taking time just to hang out—and I'm subjectively happier. I still make a best faith attempt to treat others respectfully, help others when I can, and also make time for my partner and care for her, but I genuinely like reading, watching a good film, or doing a solitary movie more than investing a lot of time in friendships, especially when they're likely to be temporary and transient.
I wish friendships would last longer, but in my experience, it takes two to invest in one (and the vast majority of people don't)—though in contrast, romantic and familial relationships are more likely to last. I've learned a lot more from reading and exploring artistic works with the time and energy that I could have spent hanging out. In addition, career work will help myself and my family secure a comfortable life in the future, whereas I wouldn't realistically expect friends to materially help me out that far in the future (assuming we'd still be in touch and geographically close).
I'm an engineer and I often find engineering terms applicable to non-engineering topics; that doesn't mean anything about how I look at life other than that I've considered my situation from a number of angles.
The most relaxing time for me is going back to the small beach town where my surviving parent retired.
The pace is slow. It takes a few days for me to downshift from a “fit everything in you wanted to do” to the “lets see what the day brings” mindset.
You might go for a walk, run into a friend and decide to just stop by for a coffee for an hour and catch up. After that? Who knows. Maybe walk down main street and find something to eat (without looking up reviews on Yelp). Have a drink before heading home and reading a book for an hour until you fall asleep.
The urge to hyper-optimize every living minute is a very common mindset among certain groups of people. And it’s often what’s needed to reach the higher socio-economic levels.
But man can it be toxic. It starts to become a goal in and of itself. It’s no longer about the “best” life but rather the “most optimum”. Yes, it’s worthwhile to figure out the best job between the two choices. But it’s also good sometimes to stop trying to optimize and just enjoy where you are at that moment.
Checking yelp reviews before getting lunch is the most alien thing I've read here in quite a while. And this site is full of people who I don't get at all.
I don't get why you're getting caught up on the language or what this has to do with hustle culture.