One night, I set my alarm clock two hours earlier than normal. Hyped up from videos on social media about the importance of hustle, I was ready to test my limits. My five-day workweeks turned into seven. My eight-hour workdays jumped to 18. “Weekends are for wimps” became my motto.
I began paying a friend $50 for every deadline missed on my giant to-do list, $50 for every time I was late to anything, and $50 every time I failed to stick to any of my 10-plus new habits. It seemed like everyone was preaching the hustle gospel, and I soon found out why: It worked. I was accomplishing in single days what normally would have taken weeks.
It was also quite the adrenaline rush: I felt powerful and invincible. Nobody else I knew was running at my pace. Unfortunately, my exhilarating affair with superhuman productivity didn’t last, and after three intense weeks, I crashed. Hard.
What followed might have been the least productive month of my career: I had no energy. No passion. No motivation. It took all I had to get out of bed before 10 a.m. This experience left me with a lot of unanswered questions: Why is everyone suddenly talking about the importance of the hustle? Why didn’t it work for me? And most importantly, what do you do when hustling doesn’t work? Here are my best tips based on what I learned:
1. Realize that humans are not designed for 26-mile sprints.
You wouldn’t ask even the most talented Olympic runner in the world to run a marathon at the same pace as a 100-yard dash -- yet that’s what we often demand of ourselves.
We run the first five miles of a marathon at blazing speeds only to end up crawling the remaining 21.2 miles on our hands and knees or collapsing completely.
If you want to be successful, hard work is critical. But there is a line. The human body, while amazing in its capabilities, is not designed to run at top speed for long periods of time. Forcing it to do so is, frankly, a naïve success strategy. It’s ineffective, unsustainable and simply not worth the price.
Ultimately, allowing yourself to crash is one of the least productive things you could possibly do, and no amount of success is worth losing your health. A billionaire once told me, “I’ve found it better to operate at 75% every single day than to alternate between 100% and crashing. I recommend finding a pace you can sustain, and saving your top speed for when you really need it.”
2. Schedule time to do nothing but think.
The human mind is incredibly powerful. You have the ability to dream, create and solve problems in ways that only a human can. Unfortunately, some of us are so busy hustling that we never fully leverage that power. We don’t give our minds room to work. As a result, we end up spending more energy than necessary, only to get lackluster results.
I don’t know about you, but my best ideas rarely come to me when I’m rushing frazzled from meeting to meeting. They come to me while I’m in the shower, hiking at the park or staring out my office window. I discovered, while building my first company from $0 to $1 million, the magic of blocking off one day a week just to think. The effects are amazing.
To this day, I still spend most Mondays working from home or coffee shops -- planning, dreaming and brainstorming through my biggest challenges and opportunities. Give your mind a chance to work for you, and you’ll be amazed at the progress you can make while seemingly doing nothing.
3. Keep your purpose above your pace.
When I hear someone bragging about the intensity of their hustle, my first thought is, “I’m glad you’re working so hard, but what are you actually getting done and why are you doing it?”
Hustle, in many ways, is the new “busy.” Anyone pursuing big dreams will be busy by default, but busyness just for the sake of being busy will not make you successful. I know people who work 20 hours a week and make millions. I also know people who work 80 hours a week yet still worry about paying rent.
Hustling, while it can be a rush, is a means to an end: Your pace only matters as much as your purpose. So, ask yourself: Twenty years from now, will I be glad I lived the way I’m living today? What will my lifestyle look like? My health? My relationships? My legacy?
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from visiting my friend who lives in an assisted living home, it’s that life nearly always goes by more quickly than we expect. Far too many ambitious men and women end up looking back with regrets -- not because they worked so hard, but because they neglected the people they loved while doing it.
Take a moment now to think about your personal values. Make a list of the things that are most important to you in life. Rank them in order of importance, then live by that list.
