I have a gamer chair. It's probably the best gift I've gotten in my whole life. My girlfriend gave it tome on my birthday a couple of years ago after she realized I didn't want to spend money on that because our budget was limited. Her logic was that if I spend 14hrs+ a day working, I need to work in the best conditions.
She was right, I just didn't consider it a priority which I know understand it was a big mistake. To perform at peak levels, we must have the proper setup, and investing in that setup is as important as our dedication and focus to perform at peak level.
Right when I started using it, I found this posturepedic chair a pain in the ass. I felt uncomfortable and I wasn't able to spend more than a few minutes at a time sitting and working, I thought it was a scam and that it had been the worst 400 dollars we've ever spent. Boy was I wrong. I started to do some research and realized that the only erroneous factor in this equation was me and my back. I had been so used to having a bad posture while working that my body had accustomed to positions that harmed me both in the short and the long term. This chair fixed my posture through usage, and after a few days I began to notice the difference, and only a couple of weeks later I realized this had been the best purchase ever. My lower back pains at night were gone, my walking improved, the feelings of tiredness after a couple of hours of sitting left the house, and my overall productivity improved considerably.
This is the moment where I understood that it's not your focus and dedication, but the setup where you focus and dedicate to the hustle the two big sides of efficiency and productivity. You can't achieve peak levels if you lack one of these two factors. So I invested a lot of money in improving my setup. Best decision ever. I am probably around 3 times more effective and productive. There were other factors that helped me rise this productivity, but this was a major one.
The point here is, the transition from painful to addictive is real, and this little example paves the way for the real topic of this post.
The modern Hustler
There are some negative or mocking connotations about calling yourself a hustler, and some people consider it an honor and something that places you above others in a sort of virtue signaling based on meritocracy, I have the discipline and drive to be a proper hustler vs the well, you need that because otherwise you wouldn't make it in this world.
You see, being a Hustler in the entrepreneurship world is considered by some as the equivalent as being the book smart kids in school, who are not intelligent but get good grades because they spend their time in the library memorizing stuff and getting ready for a test, but in no scenario they have the smart and intelligent perks that allows others to pass a test without opening a book.
But the modern term, the one that a lot of people in crypto, finance and business have adopted, is that, imagine if you are intelligent and smart, and you also are disciplined and have the drive that most people from our current generation lack?
Those who grew up intelligent, being praised by every adult around them, often underperform later in life because we got used to get by with just our brains and no effort. And of course, school was easy until it wasn't, and when you face in college other kids that are as smart as you, but ten times more focused and dedicated, we crumble.
I say we, because I was one of those kids, but I realized in high school that I needed to learn how to focus and dedicate, and that I needed discipline if I wanted to compete not with the average mexican, but with the top tier in the world. I hadn't learned how to focus when I was young, I never opened a book to study - but definitely to read, I had read around 500 books when I turned 18. I know this because I used to keep a list and ranking - and I definitely didn't know how to learn or how to work hard and long to achieve a goal.
In fact, I am twice the high school age and I still struggle with long term goals and with tasks that require perseverance and continuity. I am still a sprint kind of man, not a marathon person. I am working on this though, but it requires to hardwire your brain to a point that I simply cannot achieve yet, but I'm getting there.
Anyway, the modern Hustler is a combination of street smart, book smart, discipline and dedication. A Hustler that lacks any of those four factors is not really a Hustler, at least on my terms and according to me.
Hustling: Transitioning from painful to addictive
Putting the Hustler hoodie is a recipe for success. Yes, I can guarantee that. If you are street smart or have developed street smart qualities in your life, you dedicate the time to become book smart, and you develop discipline and learn how to dedicate to a task for a prolonged period, in continuous and calendarized bursts, you will succeed in whatever you set yourself to.
But it's easier said than done.
It's not a walk in the park, especially at first, when you set your mind to become a Hustler, the first thing you have to do is change your mentality. Then you have to change your habits. After that, you need to learn to be organized and learn how to maximize productivity. Then, and only then, you can start working towards your goals. If you skip on of these steps you will have a hard time being productive.
After a while, the habits and mindset that proved to be painful as fuck to follow, become part of your life, and even a while after, you begin to enjoy them, and you then become addicted.
Addicted to the feelings of success, of advancing, addiction to progress.
Many people tell me how the fuck are you able to wake up at 4am?, didn't you quit the corporate job to be free? That doesn't sound like freedom to me, it sounds like you're living a slave's life.
But you see, the difference here is that I work towards my self betterment, and I do it by own choice. I choose this life, and I love it. It brings me a lot of satisfactions and it gives me the money I need to have the life I want. But most importantly, on my own terms.
The Hustler life might look painful for people on the outside, and it will be painful for those who put on the hoodie. These people will give up shortly after starting, only a handful will stay on Hustling until it stops being painful and starts bein addictive.
This transition is rare but it happens, and for those that happens to them, life then turns into easy mode for them.
Would you like me to start a series on this topic? If I get more than 10 comments saying Yes, I will publish once a week a Hustler Life related publication. Make sure to share this with your Hustler friends!