Beat the Hustle

The Hustle is Real

In this day and age, the hustle culture is often the norm—especially for creative entrepreneurs. There’s always a plethora of tasks on our plate, whether we are working on building a new product, writing blog posts, keeping up with Instagram, and sending out our newsletters.

With new ideas, goals, and avenues to explore, the pile only seems to get bigger and bigger. And checking things off your to-do list can feel like an uphill climb.

The Solution is Simpler than You Think

Beating the hustle all comes down to strategy, priorities, and execution.

If you’ve found yourself in a chronic hustle, an overwhelmed state, or if you’re just wishing you could get a better handle on it all, I’ve got you covered in my Beat the Hustle Toolkit. Let’s begin!

Download your workbook and tools below.

How hustled are you?

The first step to handing off your hustle is to get to the root cause of it. So it’s time to explore your own personal experience with feeling the creative business hustle.

Use the worksheet printout, or take a piece of paper, and describe your current frustrations in a few detailed sentences. This will kick-start the process of overcoming your own unique hustle.

Take a moment to reflect on your hustling status:

• Do you feel like you’re hustling?

• And if yes, are you hustling well?

• Or are you barely staying above the water?

• Would you like to improve your hustle?

• Are you ready to take action to beat the hustle?

Identify the hustle.

Next, identify what part of the hustle has you stuck. When it comes to hustling, there are likely multiple things keeping you in a more frazzled state that you’d like.

On your worksheet, list the areas you tend to be a bit scrambled. Write down the tasks related to business and also personal ones, too. This will give you the bigger picture so you have a better idea of how you can beat the hustle.

Ask yourself the following questions:

• What doesn’t get done?

• Where do you scramble?

• Where do you get behind?

• What does get done?

• What goes smoothly?

• Where do you get ahead?

Common tasks that might have you stuck in the hustle

While you brainstorm, think about the tasks you do daily, weekly, and occasionally. Here are a few common ones to consider:

• writing and sending your newsletter

• creating and publishing Instagram content

• creating new graphics to promote your content on Pinterest

• composing and responding to emails

• writing and publishing blog posts

• outreach marketing tasks

• maintaining or fulfilling orders

• creating new products

• updating your website

• taking photos for your brand

• writing copy and captions for your marketing

• creating various graphics for your brand

• researching and figuring out business strategies

How has the hustle inhibited your business (and life)?

• What specific future tasks have been pushed to the back burner for way too long?

• Which specific tasks have been written on your planner but haven’t gotten done?

• What dreams and goals have been put on hold or have been lost to the wayside?

• How has your daily ability to get things done efficiently been affected?

• What areas of decision-making and action-taking been strained?

• In what ways has the hustle affected your business and lifestyle?

Pinpoint why these tasks haven’t gotten done.

Next, take your list and think about each task and area that is caught in the hustle. The trick is to reflect on all aspects related to the crazy state so you can start to figure out why you are experiencing extra chaos. Use the workbook to go through this step.

For each task, write down the letters that apply.

Do you experience the hustle around this task because . . .

(A) Strategy:

• You don’t have clarity so it’s hard to approach tasks or work on them?

• You’re not sure what tasks you should be doing?

• You keep changing directions so tasks get lost in the pile?

• You are juggling too many ideas and you are overwhelmed?

• You don’t have the tools or skills you need?

• You need help to get to the next level or step?

(B) Productivity:

• Your life is very busy?

• You don’t have enough time in the week to work on your business?

• You work productively, but you aren’t able to get it all done?

• Tasks take longer than planned?

• You don’t have systems or streamlined methods in place?

• You tend to scramble to get your marketing posts published?

Score.

Then, tally up the number of A’s and B’s you scored to get a better understanding of why you are weighed down and getting buried in the hustle feel:

• If you scored mostly A’s, you need better STRATEGY.

• If you scored most B’s, you need better PRODUCTIVITY.

A. Increase your brand strategy

Once you understand why your tasks aren’t getting done, it’s time to address your brand strategy. Creating a solid strategy for your business is the ultimate secret to beating the hustle.

For example, if you are spending your time on the wrong tasks, you won’t see much progress. So you end up wasting time and effort without results.

Instead, strategy will give you clarity and a direction to back up all of your tasks. It takes away the guesswork so you can focus on following your action steps and being productive. Strategy gets rid of decision-fatigue and analysis-paralysis because you have an easy-to-follow plan.

If you’re caught in the hustle, create a strategy that suits your lifestyle and unique brand. It will make a world of difference!

B. Increase your productivity

When you fix your brand strategy, your productivity will increase automatically since you’ll know what tasks to work on and you won’t waste your time on unnecessary ones.

And after you configure your new strategy, there are even more ways to increase your productivity to ensure your time is put to good use.

Building your productivity skills and having tools that help you save time allow you to get way more work done. The more you streamline your work tasks, the more you can check off. If you find yourself hustling, utilize productive hacks and resources to your advantage.

Print the actionable Beat the Hustle workbook

Save time with high-resolution stock photos

Utilize social media caption templates

Make use of done-for-you graphics

What’s inside?

Weekly video lessons
Stock photos
Graphics
Caption templates
And more!

Brand Strategy Treehouse

$29