Recently, I had the insane pleasure of being a guest on the Hardwood Hustle Podcast. The podcast is dedicated to talking about either Hardwood (basketball) or the hustle of life. I am not great on a basketball court so my episode was centered around the hustle of growing walk in love.
You can listen to the entire episode here - Hardwood Hustle Episode 173
Leading up to the interview I started thinking about what I would specifically say about hustle. I think hustle is an overused term in todays entrepreneur world. You see the well designed quotes about hustling everyday all over Pinterest. It's totally an awesome idea but defiantly think it's way overused.
So when thinking about the interview I knew that I wanted to talk about the idea of hustling, BUT doing it in a way that makes sense. I want to hustle, but I want to do it efficiently.
Now here are two scenarios:
1. I could spend all day at the studio "hustling" and do a thousand different things that don't matter just to say that I worked 10 hours today and was just hustling all day. I could wear it like a badge of honor for all the people who follow me on social media.
OR
2. I could make a list, figure out what needs to be done today, plan ahead and hustle for 8 hours and probably get more done. This option also leads to what I really love to do, which is spend time with my amazing wife and beautiful daughter. With this option I don't get to humble brag on social media because I only worked a normal workday.
I think the best part about efficient hustle is that it makes you better at everything. You start to look at everything through efficiency goggles. You refine your process to save you more time, more energy and in turn more money. My team teases me about always talking about efficiency but the more efficient we can be the more we can get done in a shorter time which leads to more time with our families and doing the things that we really love.
An efficient team can leave early on Friday because of what they've accomplished!
Here are some examples of inefficient hustle:
1. You stop what you are doing at different points in the day to check/post on twitter and instagram
2. You talk about what you are going to do someday instead of focusing on growing your business today.
3. You think ONE thing is going to make all the difference and stop focusing on the hundred little things that actually will.
4. You are a photographer who is planning a elaborate shoot but still have clients waiting for their photos.
5. You are a social media manager that doesn't batch create content and schedule it out with buffer or hootsuite.
6. You never ask yourself if the way you do something is the fastest way to do it.
7. You LOOOOOOVE telling people how busy you are.
So stop the inefficient hustle and focus on how to do things the best and most efficient way possible. Once you start you won't be able to stop and every time you walk into any place you will think "That would work better if it was over there..."
Hustling doesn't mean you are adding more to your plate. It means that you are doing what you do well and efficiently.
Here are some tools we use to hustle efficiently:
Buffer - Schedule Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest Posts
Lattergrame - Schedule Instagram posts.
Things - Make lists to make your life easier.
Dropbox - Have access to your files from anywhere.
Also, if you want to see process efficiency in action you should check out the show The Profit on CNBC