Stop Doing The False Hustle

By Kyle Wilkinson and DMSQD

You know those days when you feel like you did a ton, but were somehow still incredibly unproductive? That’s called the “false hustle,” at least according to Paper Leaf co-founder Jeff Archibald. The term originates in baseball, for example when a player sprints from the dugout to the outfield, but then jogs to get a ground ball. When you’re guilty of the false hustle, you’re expending energy in the wrong areas.

If you want to really move the needle in your work and remove false hustle from your routine, think of it as a three-step process: ID your big goals, so you know what your energy should be directed towards; ID your false hustle behaviors; ID what adjustments you can make to ensure the effort you’re investing is actually towards a greater end (and no, the immaculate organization of your email is not a greater end).

Here’s how Archibald checks himself each week to be certain that the energy he dispenses in his work is maximized, not wasted on menial tasks that have no impact on larger goals:

If we unpack goals—big ones—they’re made up of strategies and tactics. At the end of the week, if we’re working smart and not working on time-consuming, non-progressive tasks, we should be able to look back at what we accomplished and line up those accomplishments with either a tactic or strategy we’re working toward.

I… ask myself a few simple questions every Friday at 4 p.m.:

-What did I accomplish this week?

-Did I move the needle toward my monthly/quarterly goals? How?

-What can I do next week to move the needle further?

Then, I block off the upcoming week accordingly. Literally that means I hop into Google Calendar and block off chunks of time (e.g. 10 a.m. to noon on Monday) for specific tasks that tie into my overall tactics, strategies, and ultimately goals, for the following week. For me, it’s a simple way to keep moving ahead with purpose.

The energy you expend on work is a precious resource. If you’re tapping out your reserves on time-sucking, progress-irrelevant to-do’s like fine-tuning your bio or sub-categorizing your server folders, you’re not making any real progress towards your larger vision. Of course, those smaller tasks do need to get done, for the most part at least (is it going to destroy your career if you never get to that project of retroactively re-labeling hundreds of old image files according to the new company standard?). Start being more conscious of how, when, and why you’re spending valuable energy, and whether it’s true hustle or false.

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