The Three Phases of The Hustle Culture
Let me guess, you fall into one of the two camps:
Camp One:
You hate everything about hustle culture… In fact, you think that it’s toxic, unhealthy, and can even lead to burnout. You believe that working smart is the way to success!
Camp Two:
You love hustle culture and everything that comes with it! In fact, do not hesitate to put in long hours of hard work if that can get things done. You are one of those people who love the grind and hours of hard work!
You love knowing that you’re doing the things that other people aren’t willing to do… In fact, you do not even shy away from putting yourself through sacrifice to achieve your goals.
The moto of people in camp two is that nobody built success on 40-hour work/weeks. In other words, success equals long hours of hard work and grind!
Steps to Achieve Goals
Before we look at the different phases of hustle culture, you need to know that there are a lot of steps involved in achieving goals… Now, these goals can be about anything such as weight loss, earning money, business, and so on.
If you want more information, please check out Steps to Achieve Goals!
I’ve been in both of those camps, and I’ve come to the conclusion that actually, both of those camps are “wrong! I personally believe that there are actually three phases that all of your favorite entrepreneurs have ever been on. So let’s look at each of these different phases:
Phase One:
There was an ancient Greek called Archimedes, and he had this quote that said:
“If you put me in the right place, I’ll be able to move the world!”
That man was not a philosopher, magician, or lunatic… He meant that in your practical sense and he was a mathematician!
In this quote, Archimedes is discussing the concept of leverage. Without it, good luck trying to move a mass as large as the earth, but with leverage it’s possible.
Life and business are about leverage, and when you’re starting off, you don’t have many things to leverage. The only main asset that you have is your time, so you’ve got to use your time in a way to create leverage.
It’s all about doing things that get results and doing things in a short period of time that generate massive results. That’s simply what leverage is!
My Story
Anyway, along the path, I went to both camps. I worked super hard and was putting in 16 hours every single it’s In fact; I also stopped taking days off or going on holiday with friends and family! Basically, I was doing nothing but work and work!
I just tried a lot of different things, and I was also in the other camp where I believed that I was just working smart. And it’s interesting when you’re trying to find that perfect sweet spot for productivity.
It’s not about you being busy… In fact, it’s about you being productive! It’s about getting output for your inputs which is defined as optimal productivity.
This optimal spot of productivity varies for absolutely everyone… And it’s something you have to find for yourself.
It’s kind of like you’re playing golf, and you’re trying to hit the ball. Now you have got to hit it just hard enough to make it go far enough but not too far. Otherwise, you’re gonna go awry and the balls gonna go to a place that you don’t want to get to!
When you don’t know the limit of how far you can push before you get burned out. So the solution is to find that optimum sweet point for yourself, there are a couple of routes you can take.
Finding the Optimal Productivity
First of all, you can constantly push your limit until you find that sweet spot. You can constantly be tracking the symptoms you’re experiencing, stress levels, sleep timings, and so on… Basically, anything that indicates that you’re getting burned out!
So that when you do get burned out, you can start to associate cause and effect. A more easy way is to trust it from someone who’s been through this many times.
There are 4 different things you’ve got to take into count:
- You’ve got to be sleeping the amount that you need to; I promise you that this is worth it.
- You should be taking around one day off a week; this is gonna help you relax and recharge. It’s also gonna help you come back to life with a fresh perspective.
- You should also be taking maybe around an hour per day as a day off as a relaxation period.
- Also, every now and again, you can go on holiday to get a complete break from what you’ve been doing. This will help you stay productive but not burn out.
Once you have finished doing that, we can move to the next more important phase.
Phase Two:
Imagine you’ve got a parked car, and you try and turn it around… It’s gonna be pretty difficult. What you’ve got to do, is you’ve got to start moving, and then you can turn the car!
That is why Phase one is all about preparing you to start taking action. Once you have done that, the next step is Phase 2 which is all about turning that action towards a more useful point of view.
So many people get caught up, and they try and skip straight to ‘Phase 2’ by asking the wrong questions at the wrong time:
What is the optimal use of my time? How can I efficiently use my time? Is this the perfect business for me? What is my purpose? What is my vision?
It’s impossible to skip from ‘Phase 1’ to ‘Phase 2’ because ‘Phase 1’ gives you all of the data necessary to optimize in ‘Phase 2’. As I said, you can’t turn a car unless you’re moving… And by taking action and trying a lot of different things, you’re able to collect a lot of data that can be used in Phase 2.
Getting More & Doing Less
Again, it’s about productivity and not busyness as well… In fact, the best way to be productive is to get more through less. Phase 2 is all about figuring out what is the best thing you can do. So in Phase 2, it’s about going through all of the different things that you’ve tried and figuring out which of these things provide the most leverage.
Try to figure out which of these activities require the least amount of input, time, and energy. While requiring little input from you, it must deliver the most amount of outputs and results!
And again Phase 2 isn’t a clear-cut process, you’re going to be trying things… In fact, it might still take some time for you to find the right thing. On top of that, it will still take some time to iterate and improve as well. Once you are taking action, it will provide the data required to make the important changes.
Here’s the thing – You can be working super hard on the wrong things which will not yield any results! On the other hand, working even a little bit on the right things will help you make a whole lot of progress.
Elimination & Simplification
So it’s not necessarily about how hard you work, it’s about what you work on… And somewhere through that process, you’re gonna reach a point where you have a model… That can be a model for life and how you use your time. It could even be a model for business and the activities that you’re doing to grow your business.
In short, a time will come when you understand exactly what you should be doing. Once you have reached that stage, it will be your shifting point! Because you no longer have to ask yourself the question what should I be doing?
The only thing you’ve got to focus on is how to improve the things that you’re currently doing. Once you’re in that mindset of trying to improve the things you’re currently doing, that’s when you get to storm ahead of the competition!
Also try to avoid things & questions such as: What should I be doing? Is this a new good idea? Should I be doing this instead of that? Questions like these can be draining, and it takes away your opportunity to generate leverage as well.
When you get rid of that, you can really start to level up at the few activities that generate results!
I truly believe that there’s an insane amount of power in Elimination and Simplification. But once you’ve done that it leads us on to ‘Phase 3’, which again is more important than ‘Phase 2’.
Phase Three:
Now, when I bring up points about elimination and focusing more on a selected few activities. The perfect example we get is Elon Musk (more of a perfect counter-example).
But here’s the thing with that guy… Elon Musk already has a lot of leverage, money, and he even has a whole lot of brand recognition. On top of that, he has a whole lot of talent that he’s able to use and talent is the main world here.
So whether Elon Musk works hard or “not, it doesn’t matter because he has fifty-six thousand employees that are constantly working whether he is working or not!
So I believe that who is actually far more important than… “Who you’re working with?” is more important than “what you’re working on?”
Importance of Team Building
If you have a great team of people, they’re gonna figure out what to work on. It’s important of building a culture and making a solid team of talented individuals.
For example, there are now four great team members on our team. It excites me more than ever because I recognized that my mission is to help people use their time wisely to remove distractions. It gets more and more realistic when I surround myself with people who are great at what they do.
Having a team of great people is very important as it helps generates an insane amount of leverage. I went from me being able to work 16 hours/day to being able to work 72 hours a day with my team, which creates leverage!
So to summarize, first of all, it’s about working hard and doing something. I believe that working hard is 100% a good idea to the point it starts getting unproductive.
And once you’ve worked hard, you then have the data necessary to figure out are best activities to do. Then it’s about elimination, finding the few things that truly generate results… And once you have that, you have a system that works whether in business or in life!
Then it’s about building a team, because “Who” is more important than “What” and that’s how you truly do great things.
Thank you so much for Reading this, and Please Leave Me a Comment Bellow about What You Think.