Say No to the Hustlers, Punt Your Resolutions, and Become a Better You!

Stop the Hustle and Become a Better You.

Hustlers wear me out. Just typing the word makes my head spin. Why am I disrespecting an entire movement of hustlers here on LifeUntucked^®? Well, rest assured, they aren’t pausing here often.

As soon as the 90-days left… 60-days left… 30-days left… countdowns have ended, in come the Best-Year-Ever mantras. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about doing better and becoming a better version of myself, too. I just don’t believe we need to live in a constant state of hustle and busyness to pull it off.

What about you?

Case in point…

Guess what this week is (besides the third week in January)?

Well, it’s the approximate time of every new year when most people drop back and punt those well-intended New Year’s Resolutions and call it quits. Another gym membership goes down the tubes. Sigh.

And you know, I’m not convinced all that hustling gets them any further along by the end of the day than the rest of us. It reminds me of the answer Daniel Pink gave in an interview to the question, what’s your favorite saying?

The Tortoise won.”

—Daniel Pink, author

That’s it—steady, consistent, and intentional beats a hurried frenzy every time.

Even Dave Ramsey gets it, and he tends to hyperventilate on occasion while trying to drive home a point…

We live in a culture full of hares; but the tortoise always wins.”

—Dave Ramsey, personal finance personality

So, what’s hustling, um… not hustling, have to do with the New Year?

We don’t need this kind of stress to simply start the new year!

The hustle culture always bothered me a bit, and I don’t really know why.

Maybe it started that time I let out a good, “Thank God it’s Friday!” within earshot of this guy at work, Rocky. He was in marketing and good ol’ Rocky was a king among extroverts. You know the guy, the one with a caffeine buzz that never seems to wear off.

So, in Rocky’s make-a-big-deal-out-anything way, as only Rocky can do. Making sure he stands out big and loud… belts out this goofy-assed cheer… “Rah, Rah, Rah! Only two more days until Monday! Rah, Rah, Rah!” Yep, it was that bad. Yet…

Rocky saw himself as one of the original hustlers.

The thing is no one knew what Rocky actually did. But he did have an overabundance of unbridled energy, I’ll give him that.

I think Seth Godin says it rather well…

We’re not in a race to check off as many boxes as we possibly can before we are out of time. Instead, we have the chance to use the time to create moments that matter. Because they connect us, because they open doors, because the moments, added up, create a life.”

—Seth Godin

I also saw this line on one of those internet memes this past week and thought it summed up what I’m talking about here quite well…

Doing more is easy. Becoming more… now that’s the hard part. 

You can’t hustle your way through that, can you? But you can have a great year without burning yourself out in the process.

Be untucked.

*I know it’s a box turtle and not a tortoise. I just loved the expression and thought it worked.

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