Reclaiming the Hustle

Imagine leaving your hometown as a high-school dropout and moving across the country. Nothing to your name, except your newfound ability to make Mozzarella.

And with this newfound ability, you start making Mozzarella in your apartment and selling it to Italian restaurants like bootleg CDs. 

That’s the origin story of Chris Bianco, regarded as the best pizza maker in America. I stumbled upon his remarkable story in the new season of Chef’s Table Pizza Edition (who said Netflix didn’t have porn?) He took a huge risk, bet on himself, obsessed over his craft, persisted, and became a household name. 

In short, he hustled.

It could very well be that Chris’ origin story is another example of survivorship bias. How many people like him tried to sell homemade Mozzarella from their apartment and not make it? They hustled as well. It just didn't work out for them.

In the last few years the word hustle has become unsavory, like the band Nickelback. Not without cause, though. Hustle culture emerged along with many toxic traits. Loudmouths peddled “no time for sleep,” “always be grinding,” and a bunch of other catchphrases that became the bro equivalent of “live, love, laugh.”

It became easy to hate the word and what it stood for, unable to distinguish the nuance and turned off by the ambassadors of hustle culture.

This is why we need to reclaim hustle culture. It’s not about endless hours in front of your screen, reminding others that you are hustling, #lovingthegrind, neglecting all social relationships in favor of your obsession. These are the toxic traits.

Hustle is the passionate pursuit of our life’s meaning through action. It is a fundamental pillar of living an intentional life and increasing your independence from external forces. We need to hustle for ourselves, to find our own bets that give life meaning and provide financial security, whatever that is for you. 

We need to gamble like Chris Bianco bet on his ability to make the best bootleg Mozzarella in all of Phoenix. And once we find that thing that we love that awakens our hustle instinct, we have to pursue it feverishly. We need to dive into it. This is the way to win the battle against Steven Pressfield’s Resistance; that voice in our mind that tells us that we are not ready, that we won’t succeed. That’s all fear in disguise. 

We hustle by knowing and doing the remarkable things you need to do to set yourself apart from the rest. It’s about uncommon focus, the hallmark of being in a flow state. It’s about building a community with likeminded people—finding the tribe of people that are as wonky as you about the same thing.

If we don’t reclaim hustle culture to serve us and to push us to new limits we risk stagnation.

In our pursuit of balance, we delude ourselves into a false binary of choosing our relationships and our health over a craft we actually give a shit about. “It’s all about work-life balance,” goes the cliché. 

The real problem is we are not doing work that deserves our hustle. We get told to manage this seesaw between work and life. But do you ever question why you are in the seesaw in the first place? 

At this point, you have two choices depending on your circumstances: You find a place where you believe the work to be meaningful and you will be properly rewarded for your time, or you create that place for yourself and master your craft outside of the “safety” of a 9 to 5. 

This is no easy decision. But it is a decision we all need to make. The longer we postpone it, the louder we are shushing our instinct; it already knows what we want to do—if only we listen. 

I’m facing this decision currently. My work does not jolt me like it used to. Mondays are not the only day of the week I dread. Emails that took minutes, became hourly affairs. I am not my sprightly self. But I finally decided that I need to find that thing to obsess about. I need to find my hustle. 

I’m not staring at the proverbial fork in the road, but a vast abyss on a foggy day. This is not a lecture; rather a reminder for me and you, about what we need to do to live intentionally.

Even after making the decision. The challenges won’t stop there. Fear will trample, leg swipe, elbow joust, and pin us down at every chance it can. Hustle is finding the emotional energy to do the remarkable and reverse suplex fear. And you’ll find that if you are actually doing things that you care about. 

We need hustle culture more than ever. We need to live more intentionally. We need to obsess. We need to find our tribe of wonks. We need to hustle to become our best self instead of letting stasis rot us from within.

Reclaim the hustle.