The Hustler’s Playbook: Hustlers Love Work

Hustlers love working. They love producing. They don’t have any trouble finding the motivation to get out of bed in the morning. In fact, the opposite is true; they can’t wait to get up and get started. You never hear a hustler say, “Don’t work too hard,” or “Take it easy.” Those sentiments would never occur to them. It’s unlikely that you are working too hard, and you may be taking things easy, neither of which serves you.

Non-hustlers, however, don’t love working. Work is simply a means to an end, and that end is their survival. The non-hustler isn’t happy working; they’d rather be doing something else, anything else. You hear non-hustlers say things like “Back to the grind,” using that word in a way that is 180 degrees in opposition to the way the hustler uses it. Wednesday is “hump day,” the midpoint of their suffering. To celebrate the end of the week they happily congratulate each other by saying, “Thank God it’s Friday.”

Hustlers find a way to do things that improve themselves as part of their recovery, as part of how they wind down. The hustler winds down by spending time with their family and friends (the reasons why they hustle), by exercising, and by doing things that will improve their hustle. They are very conscious of how much time they spend on things that are pure empty calories. The hustler recovers so that she can gear up to produce more and better work. It’s part of the process.

Non-hustlers sit in front of screens. But they don’t produce anything for those screens. They use those screens to consume, mostly entertainment. They want to get away from work so that they can watch television or surf the Internet. The non-hustler doesn’t use time away from work to improve themselves, to recover, or to reload so that they can produce even more and greater results. They don’t think enough of their work to believe their recovery is part of the process. Non-hustlers dread Mondays and you can see it on their tired faces every Monday morning.

Hustlers love work. Non-hustlers resent work.

If you are going to hustle, you are going to have to love your work. You are going to have to give yourself over to your work. Anything less isn’t hustling.