This is especially aimed at those hustling out in the valley
Ever since I came out of college, I’ve always focused on ‘hustling.’ This meant trying to grow my brand, work on my startups, and doing all of this while maintaining a full-time job.
Hustling has become a major phenomenon in recent years, especially in the valley and the San Francisco Bay Area. After all, with the pandemic, many have realized that making extra income is necessary to maintain a specific lifestyle or even just to pay down their credit card balance.
With millennials and Gen Z, a major focus has been dedicated to building hustling empires, making money, or growing your own brand. As a result, new forms of wealth have been created in this digital age, from startups to the more recent cryptocurrency trends.
The unfortunate truth is the majority will fail, and only a select few will manage to ‘succeed.’ This is the so-called hustle culture we live in today.
I wanted to ‘succeed’ so I joined the movement.
In my early 20s, all I could think about was hustling and trying to make a name for myself. I focused on trying to line myself with a job in the valley and worked and dedicated myself to a startup alongside my full-time job.
Apparently, to me, this was the only way I could succeed, by overloading myself with work and following trends. Not only this, the focus was to make money and never spend it on the things I love but instead on the things I deemed useful for my future success. I needed to, after all, plan for my early retirement so I could be happy for my future.
Many are undertaking a variety of similar movements.
One of the most common ones is the “FIRE” movement. The focus is to be frugal as possible in your 20s or 30s so you can build enough savings to then re-invest into investments such as dividend stocks so you can draw down an income and retire early.
However, the pandemic showed that this strategy wasn’t malleable, with many stocks cutting their dividends to simply survive. Many of these people would have had to take extra jobs to make ends meet.
All these movements and the hustle culture grew on me, but in almost an instant, my perspective changed. I had some kind of epiphany after I read a story about people’s regrets in life, and one of the biggest ones was not enjoying their youth with the money they made.
Don’t get me wrong, saving is important but what’s the point of saving all your money only to get old and not spend it on the things that you could enjoy in your youth.
This was when I started asking questions about everything I did, and I decided to shift one huge aspect of my life.
I started to ask myself one question constantly.
“Will this give me joy?”
I adopted this from Marie Kondo’s decluttering approach.
As a minimalist, her approach was to ask yourself constantly if things bring you joy before you decide to chuck it out or keep it.
I started taking this approach with everything I do outside of cleaning.
I tested everything on the spectrum, from big purchases, holidays and even trying to save money.
Being frugal and saving money is important, but this should not compromise your enjoyment of life.
There’s no point in trying to save at the cost of potentially your mental health and your youth. As corny as it sounds, you do only live once, so why not make sure you enjoy your life?
Even Tim Ferriss has realized this — having fun comes first.
Tim Ferriss is notable for his work in the entrepreneur community as both an angel investor (like in Evernote, Shopify, and TaskRabbit) and an author of self-help books. His most notable works have been titles within the 4-hour series.
As someone who has empowered many, he often gets questions about how he prioritizes his days.
His answer might surprise many that think he is a huge hustler that prefers to work. However, he prefers to keep as little things on his calendar and leaves it flexible, so he doesn’t have to stress multitasking things simultaneously.
“I don’t have to do anything in this schedule. I choose to do them because I like them. None of them are financially-driven or unpleasant obligations.
If the chance to do something more fun comes up last-minute, I can cancel all of them.” — Tim Ferriss
Life is too short to live with regrets.
I am not saying you shouldn’t save and hustle.
It’s important to be financially stable and actually be able to plan your future so you can be comfortable with you’re older.
But those who have continuously saved their whole life because they didn’t want to spend just a tiny bit on themselves or just enjoy their life in their earlier years are doing things the wrong way.
After all, what’s the reason for hustling hard and making a name for yourself if you can’t enjoy the things at an age you could do them in. So, in my opinion, start asking if things bring you joy and if they do, start doing them.
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