Hold up
In an age where everyone with a Facebook page considers themselves an aspiring small business owner, Crew’s Ryan Robinson manages to compile what amounts to a holy grail of beginners’ information to get these startup hopefuls—well, started up.
And yet, something feels a bit off.
Make Time or Break Time?
What sticks out to me about this piece as odd isn’t the business advice—that’s solid. So is the general point (keep your side gig separate from everything else in your life, meeting deadlines, etc.), and the legal aspect is a sure way to make everyone double-check their own NDAs before continuing.
No, what sticks out to me is the notion that the first thing you should cut out of your life to make room for your side business is your leisure time.
Whoa.
Hard pass on that.
Hustler Issue
We’re still in this weird area where we pay a reverent amount of respect to people who opt for an “all work, no play” mentality.
Rappers yell about it all over the radio. The Weeknd—one of my personal favorite artists of all time—goes so far as to romanticize the idea, tying it to the archetype of a strong, independent woman. “Make the commitment,” the article reads.
It may be ruthless, ugly, downright unhealthy, even—but as a culture, we’re insanely turned on by the notion of the hustle.
Fatal Attraction
We’ve talked about hustle culture (and the fact that we reject it at face value) before: When you spend every waking moment thinking about working, actually working, and then trying to get more work on top of that, you burn out.
How can you expect to achieve your highest performance goals if you’re constantly running a hair under the red line?
I don’t care how strong and independent you are—you, like almost every other person on this planet, are a human being. You need time to decompress.
Enjoying Your Free Time isn’t a Crime
That’s not to say you won’t have to make sacrifices along the way.
If you truly want to build a business while holding down a nine-to-five, be prepared to lose some sleep—just know that simply having down time isn’t a frackin’ crime.
If kicking back with a beer and an episode or two of NCIS is how you get down, great. Relax your mind and come back fresh tomorrow.
When hustle hurts
I also want to close on the point that, though we’ve rejected the surface-level notion of the hustle, the concept it truly stands for is so valid.
[clickToTweet tweet=”If you scrape by each month because of odd jobs and side gigs- you can claim the hustle.” quote=”If your only mission is to put food on the table and you manage to scrape by each month only because of a bevy of odd jobs and side gigs, you can safely claim the hustle.”]
I get the feeling that you might not be the kind of person who wants to, though.
#PickASideNotSideHustle
