112. Diminishing Returns on Hustle

Hey, everybody, hope you are doing awesome today. I want to share with you a basic concept. You've probably heard about it in different ways. Diminishing returns now. This is something we studied if those who are in business school or got a degree in that in marketing, we talk about diminishing returns, you put more effort into something and results don't come out of it. So they talk about diminishing returns on effort or marketing or different resources that are inputs.

And I'm going to suggest to you that there is diminishing returns on Hussle. Now, there are certainly times when we need to really focus and bear down and put a lot of effort into something to put a lot of energy into something and really push, really go a little off balance, push more than we normally would work that 14 or 16 hour day or whatever it might be for a short period of time. But if we do that for a long period of time, what we're going to find is that we start getting fatigued.

We're unable to keep up. We're unable to keep that level of focus. And so one of a few things happen on the sutler area. We might start losing the quality of the work that we're doing, and we might not realize that we might be making poor decisions, poor financial decisions, poor strategic decisions, and we don't realize it. And if you are ever looking for a symptom of that, if you've got a lot of projects that you've started that are all open and they're not finished or you have a lot of different marketing programs you've invested in and ideas or coaching products that sound great and you started Amber V.

didn't finish them. And now you have all this money that's been laid out and you have all this effort. You've hustled, you've done work, but it's not been focused and it's hurting you. The second thing that happens is sometimes we begin to strain relationships and we don't realize it. We get shorter with people. We are more likely to jump to conclusions or live off of a stereotype or judge people off of a stereotype or past performance or things they did in the past or hold something against people.

And we can get shorter with people. And very often where this goes unnoticed is at home with our family members, people who might or might not right away confront us. They might wait a while. They might have a style where they kind of let things play out and see how they go. But most of us don't want to be rude or condescending or short with our family members of the people we love or our friends. And so that's another area where that shows up that is really undesirable.

And usually it only becomes apparent when there is some sort of blow up or fight or something that comes to a head. And then the third area that this shows up is just an outright physical or. Breakdown of some way that is health related, it might be somewhat stress related, so you kind of go into the mental health area as well as far as just burnout, inability to focus, more inability to go on, the sense of why am I doing this?

Why did I even start this? And if you've been an entrepreneur for a while, if you've been in business for a while, if you've been a parent for a while, you've probably had those moments like, why did I start this? Why did I do this? And at these times of burnout, it can be very difficult to to focus, to understand why we did what we did. There's that quote by the famous football coach, Vince Lombardi.

Fatigue makes cowards of us all. And for a lot of us, we just lose focus. We lose the understanding of why we're doing what we're doing. Things just don't seem to matter anymore. It's kind of like the opposite of those movies where the guy or the girl falls in love and they see everything. That's wonderful. We're in the opposite place. Everything we're seeing is through these dark colored glasses, through this sort of just abysmal, dismal view of the world that's not very happy.

So I want to suggest to you is as a simple way of determining whether or not the hustle you're doing is good hustle or not or productive hustle is are you having fun with it? And what I mean by that is, are you engaged now? That doesn't mean you're always going to win if you're an athlete. Sometimes part of the fun is the comeback. Sometimes part of the fun is even getting beaten by somebody and saying, OK, I'm to go back to the gym, I'm to go back to the drawing board and I'm going to figure things out.

I'm going to work out how I can evolve to another level, which is very different from just outright hating the process, feeling overwhelmed, feeling like the challenge is too big, feel like there's too much going on, feel like you bit off way more than you can chew. And then the other symptoms, again, of arguing with people you normally don't argue with, if you're arguing with that friend of yours that's normally calm mannered or you find yourself arguing with three or four people in your family, you notice, wait, nobody else is arguing with the family members.

Like I've got one on ones going on with three people in the family. Maybe it's me. And so, again, I want to make sure we give Hussle. It's do I know you know, maybe fifteen years ago, Helsel was everything in the last two to three years. Hustle's taken a beating and I think there's definitely a place for it. In my experience, there's a place for it. There's times where we want to put everything into something.

And I believe there's a lot of truth to that idea that most of us don't live truly balanced lives. We live little pockets of hustle and then relaxation and breaks. So it's not this flat line thing. It's more of like an up or down thing, but with enough time for rest, enough time or for recovery and enough time to enjoy life outside of work. So we're not creating a situation where everything is determined based on whether or not we get a certain result.

I think about an interview I had with Holly McPeak and she a world class beach volleyball player, and she talked about when she was playing tournaments and she was only focused on the results and almost like over hustling. It wasn't very fun if she lost, she was really mad and ticked off. And I've definitely experienced that as an athlete. It was actually kind of reassuring to a certain degree that somebody at that high of a level in their sport also felt the same.

So these are normal things and these are signs that perhaps we're taking it too seriously. We're taking it too hard. And so I encourage you. Be gentle with yourself, enjoy the process, yes, enjoy the challenge, enjoy the fact that sometimes you're going to make a post and it's not going to succeed, you're going to work really hard on something that's not going to work out. You're going to have that day like I had, where I invested twelve thousand dollars in a demo, at a live event, at an expo.

And it didn't work out, but I made the money back up. After a few years, I learned from it and I was able to sort of, you know, live to to sell another day or play another day. So I hope you find this helpful. I hope you and your family, your loved ones are doing great. If you'd like additional support in creating your 3-Day Weekend Lifestyle, whether you're an employee, an entrepreneur or a freelance or a side-hustler, whatever stage you're at, we can help you to start creating, first of all, a life outside of work that's more enjoyable and more fulfilling and eventually help you understand how to start creating income in a way that's more focused, that still leverages hustle, but not put you in a situation where you're being leveraged by hustle.

As a simple example, you being the person that's driving the car, rather than feeling like you're being driven by an insecurity, driven by a need for approval, driven by something, we want you behind the wheel. We want you deciding where things go and join the process and join the hustle and join the victories, but also enjoying the downtime. So, again, hope you're doing awesome, as always. Look forward to helping you help more people and make more money and less time.

Do what you do best so you can better enjoy your family, your friends, your life and this journey. Thanks so much for listening.