There is this immense pressure these days to DO MORE.
Sleep less.
Hustle hard.
Get sh*t done!
But it’s a lie. These “HUSTLE!” voices aren’t going lead us to the stuff we actually want.
It’s not going to make you more likely to be that dad who really shows up at the dinner table the way you actually want to.
It's not gonna make you more likely to be a writer who lives in that powerful peace of fulfilling creativity.
It's not gonna bring long-term wealth that leads to that kind of engaged fulfillment.
NO. Hustle’s just not going to get you stuff like this. There’s more to this story…
So here's three reasons why HUSTLE is actually HURTING us.
Watch the video:
1. Hustle lets anxiety run the ship.
Now, we’ve all heard those motivational, talking-head entrepreneurs tell us to work harder and that we just gotta get out there and do it.
And I’ve got to be honest — the first thing I feel when I hear these guys speak … is motivation.
FOLLOWED IMMEDIATELY by some body-flushes of anxiety.
I gotta just hustle.. but on what??
What’s gonna get me the results??
What if people don’t like it!?
WHAT IF NOBODY FINDS IT!??
Hustle as a way of being in creative work looks like this:
It just floods your system with anxiety.
Why?
Because it convinces you that where you are is NOT ok, that you just gotta muscle up and get to where you’re SUPPOSED to be and that everywhere in between is failure.
It puts you in a kind of fight or flight mode, letting anxiety — something that serves us well when we’re being chased by tigers on the plains — steer the ship.
Making business decisions when you’re anxious is like shopping for groceries when you’re starving — you end up with a ton of junk at the end of the day.
So, the first way hustle hurts us is it lets anxiety run the ship, which means we don’t end up doing work we’re proud of or making decisions that matter.
2. Hustle tries to sprint a marathon
Hustle makes us feel like we’ve got to be sprinting ALL. THE. TIME.
But most of our best work as creatives and entrepreneurs comes out when we’re moving at a marathon pace.
There’s no surprise why so many successful people use the metaphor of a marathon to talk about their journey.
But — and I feel for all of us here — watching people we admire in social media, tracking book launches or product releases or funding rounds… it’s like being a spectator at a marathon.
You’re at this one little corner of the track, and you see these runners just whizzing by.
Gary Vaynerchuck just launched a new book…
Elizabeth Gilbert is so amazing…
oh that guy is flying…
and that lady is catching up too…
You see them wiz by and it looks like they run at that speed ALL the time.
But what you’re really seeing is one little corner of the entire marathon.
You don’t see the super hard hill climb just around the bend, or the 16 miles they were running on their own, all alone, footstep after footstep at a marathon pace, rationing their strength to make it all the way.
Nobody’s tweeting during those times.
Nobody’s getting articles written about them when they’re just plodding along, writing day after day.
If they were the headlines would read something like:
“Local Author ‘Feeling Pretty Shit’ About How The New Book’s Coming Along.”
“Illustrator ‘Super Pissed’ About Not Having Any Good Ideas Recently.”
“‘Web Traffic Pretty Much Same As Yesterday,’ Blogger Confesses.”
When all we see is one little corner of the marathon, it feels like everyone else is running faster.
And this pressure to “always be hustling” feeds on that insecurity.
So that’s the second way hustle hurts us: it tries to sprint a marathon, making us feel like a marathon pace is basically giving up. Which is bullshit.
3. Hustle burns you out
You see, hustle is an outward expression of an inward anxiety.
It feeds on the idea that you are not enough, that you just need to make xxxxxx much money, or that you just need to get xxxx much recognition… and THEN you’ll be OK, then you’ll be enough.
This is the lie, the shitty psychology that gives hustle it’s strength.
In the hustle worldview, you’re a candle just waiting for someone (or something) to come by and light you up.
But what any experience in personal development will teach you is that YOU ARE ALREADY LIGHT. You’re like a SUN, a massively combusting, non-stop, roiling boil of heat, energy and light.
So why do we cover it up and wait for others to turn us on?
I can’t think of a better recipe for burnout than to focus our efforts on some external validation.
Reason number 3 why hustle hurts us is because it tries to force us into this lie, that we’re not good enough or successful enough, that we have to do more in order to become someone worthwhile.
It’s a lie that’s going to lead us to burnout.
We want to change our lives!
There’s a strong desire to hustle! We want to change our lives, shape it more on our terms.
This is noble! This is good.
But hustle unbridled is a disease that feeds on the worst parts of us…
1. it let’s anxiety control the ship, causing us to make decisions in a fight-or-flight mode that leaves us with a pile of junk at the end of the day.
2. it tries to get us to sprint a marathon and makes us feel like failures for setting a realistic marathon pace.
3. it wants us to look to some outside source (money, recognition) for validation, pushing us towards burnout.
Well, I already think you’re the sh*t. Screw hustle. We’ve all gotta work hard, but inviting the hustle worldview in can be like staying with an abusive partner. We don’t need that bullshit drama.
Want to go deeper on how to do better creative work? Listen to this episode of the podcast: Antihustle — Why Hustling Hurts You (FS161).
Thanks for reading!
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All hail Chase
Yep! This article does put the finger onto the bleeding issue! I’ve been very much anxiety driven and have no or very little results to show for all my efforts. Time for a change in attitude! Thanks!
3 reasons why Hustling may benefit you.
Hustling let’s you take anxiety and make it your servant. Yes, you get to take all of the feelings of worry, nervousness, or uneasiness which is nothing more than energy anyway and re-channel it and make it work for you instead of wasting it. It can help you create that sense of urgency right when you need it. Hustling is just like anything else in life, you’ve got to know how to harness its energy.
A true hustler knows that he cannot sprint a 400 meter dash very effectively but he can certainly do so in a 100 meter dash. A hustler doesn’t prefer the marathon over the sprint because he recognizes both are important and there’s a time and place for each. Why would a hustler prefer a marathon when a sprint is a better fit for the task at hand and visa versa?
A true hustler knows that hustling has to be tempered with rest and relaxation. The hustler is a fan of the mantra “you never know how much you can do until you do to much.” A true hustler is aware that hustling is not an all the time thing because that doing anything all the time is not sustainable. A true hustler is offering you the opportunity to look inside of yourself and know that you can be more, do more and have more in your life if you’re willing to get out of your comfort zone. A true hustler is trying to remind you of the fact that too many people go to their graves with their song still in them and that you don’t have to be one when you understand how hustling can benefit you.
You don’t have to hustle either and that doesn’t mean your wrong.
Exactly! You’ve nailed it, Rick:
1. Hustle makes you anxious, which gives you energy (but you may not be thinking/deciding clearly)
2. Hustle loves the sprint, hates the marathon. (Creative work for sustainable success is a marathon made of little sprints, not the other way around.)
3. Hustle, out of fear of insignificance, convinces you you don’t have a song yet, that you have to go out and make it up real quick. THEN you’ll be *somebody*. (Instead of working from the song and significance you already have.)
Glad you’re connecting with this, Rick! I appreciate you rewording it like this.
I think you’re approaching hustle the same way that many people are… incorrectly.
Hustle is simply hard work. You’re not against hard work, are you?
Of course, hustling to the point of self-injury is silly. Working hard to the point of self-injury is silly.
Of course, hustling on irrelevant tasks is foolish. Working hard on irrelevant tasks is foolish.
I think people started using “hustle” because that’s the term their coach in high school used.
Maybe, that’s the disconnect.
At practice (let’s say basketball), you hustled. You might work out, you might do dribbling drills or shooting drills, and you will do a lot of running. You worked on relevant tasks/skills and you worked hard.
But you won’t work on your golf swing or how to do a penalty kick or how to hike a football. That’s not the game at hand.
Does this need spelled out for business?
If you want to be a better basketball player, you don’t spend your time golfing. You play basketball. If you want to be a better runner, you don’t spend your time sitting on the couch. You run. If you want to paint your house, you don’t spend your time mowing the grass. You paint the house.
If you want to build your business, you focus on building your business.
Maybe that’s the issue: “build your business” doesn’t have one, cut-and-dry definition. Everyone is mentally lumping together every “build your business” tactic together and thinking it applies to them. But people are really building “an authority business for left-handed pet owners who like to ski” or “a community business for cover bands who dress in animal costumes” (if they were heavy metal, they could be the “Furry Fury”).
I hope you don’t think I’m bashing you guys. I’m not. I think you’re missing the forrest for the trees.
In fact, this is the reason things like the Roadmap are so important. You have to know what to work on. That’s what your coach did in high school or litle league or whatever. That’s what the Roadmap does.
Maybe hustle is hustle is hustle. Maybe I’m biased by the context I’m used to hearing it in.
But I think this article and the related podcast episode could summed up like this:
“Work for the sake of work is silly. Hustle is hard work. Thus, hustle for the sake of hustle is very silly. Hustle aimed at a goal is a force multiplier (or whatever civilians call it). You need a plan. We can help you hustle in a way that actually gets you closer to your goal.” And then you could have worked on your standup for the rest of the show, Chase.
Ha! “Furry Fury” got me, Josh. Even in the context of me wanting to just defend myself you got me gigglin’!
It’s been very interesting posting this video and the podcast before it. Some people have very strong “OMG YES I NEEDED THIS!” reactions, others wonder what the fuss is about.
The difference is probably important. I think some people’s relationship to work, to results, to achievement is a kind of addiction…. or blindness, or some unhealthiness. This message is for them, for us.
Maybe it’s because it feels like the whole world tells you you just have to hustle, and if you’re not successful, well, then you don’t have the spunk, kid.
But I’ve been at professional creative work for long enough. I’ve been both too hard and too gentle on myself. I’ve seen the balance and the imbalance. And man, “hustle” is a word that’s being co-opted. It DOES sound like just “you gotta work hard.” We love that. But we’re not, as a culture, very wise yet about how easily “you gotta work hard” get’s turned into “you’re not good enough” or “you should have given up a long time ago.”
Building a business isn’t hard. Building a business fast is. Being successful isn’t hard. Being successful by tomorrow is.
Hustle means a lot more than “work hard” now. It includes something about speed, about worth. And I wanted, in this video and the larger podcast, to point that out, to invite more dialogue about the dangers of working TOO hard.
If I titled this “3 ways working too hard can hurt you” you’d be, like, “yea, duh.” But I used the word hustle because I think it’s a popular word with a dark side.
When you get a chance, you should look up the definition of Hustle. You’ll probably react the same way Corbett did in the podcast: “Honestly, I don’t want any of this.”
That said, you also are right, Josh. It’s just a word that DOESN’T mean that to a lot of people. It simply means work hard to them. In which case, read this as “working too hard, being too busy, etc.”
While reading your reply, I stumbled across the core of the idea that I tried to present (and wish I’d have said in the 1st place).
There’s the word “hustle”. And there’s what we had here last week – failure to communicate.
1st: the word.
Dictionary.com definition #1: to proceed or work rapidly or energetically.
I’m cool with that.
2nd: the situation we’re talking about
You’re not wrong, Chase. The points that you and the rest of Team Fizzle made are 100% correct except that it isn’t hustle. It’s the worship of hustle.
“Hustle is killing you” is true but misleading because hustle has no more inherent good or evil in it than books or knives or drugs.
“The love of hustle is killing you” is much more accurate.
“Pretending that hustle is a business tactic is killing your business” is true.
Brother Chase, it’s a “money vs the love of money” situation. Maybe I’m being pedantic. Maybe the difference is important. Maybe it’s Maybelline.
Nope, she’s definitely born with it, Josh! :)
good points, man.
I think you nailed it. You’re being pedantic.
Just started this episode this morning and it was exactly what I needed to hear!
Also- this is a cool article about why it’s important for your brain to sleep: http://ksulaunch.net/1XoXBNB
I’ve been an entrepreneur for 12 years + have killed 4 businesses thanks to “hustling ” + burnout. This is one of the best videos I’ve EVER seen in my entire journey. THANK YOU, Chase – this is EXACTLY why I’m working with entrepreneurs on ending burnout. Thank you :)