128. Hustle vs Hard Work: The Critical Difference
Are you constantly chasing the next goal, pushing yourself to the limit, and feeling like you can never quite catch up? In today's episode, I'm diving into the crucial distinction between hustling and hard work—two approaches that might seem similar on the surface but lead to dramatically different outcomes for your interior design business and personal wellbeing.
The pendulum has swung dramatically in our culture, from glorifying hustle culture with "rise and grind" mantras to now questioning whether hard work itself is problematic. This black-and-white thinking misses the nuance of what truly drives sustainable success. Having experienced both the draining effects of hustle mode and the fulfillment of focused hard work, I can tell you that understanding the difference is transformative.
I'll walk you through how to recognize whether you're operating from a place of frantic hustle or purposeful hard work, why the emotional fuel behind your actions matters more than the hours you put in, and practical steps to shift your approach if needed. This distinction isn't just about semantics, it's about creating a business that supports your life rather than consumes it, allowing you to achieve meaningful results without sacrificing your well-being in the process.
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What You’ll Discover from this Episode:
How to identify the key differences between hustling and working hard in your design business.
Why the emotional fuel driving your work matters more than the number of hours you put in.
The long-term consequences of staying in hustle mode and how it can sabotage the very success you're chasing.
How to check in with yourself to determine if your work creates a net positive or negative impact on your life.
Practical strategies to shift from frantic hustle to focused, intentional hard work.
The importance of incorporating rest and recovery into your work cycles for sustainable success.
Listen to the Full Episode:
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The Practice of Groundedness by Brad Stolberg
Full Episode Transcript:
Hey, designer, you're listening to episode 128. And today we're talking about the difference between hustling and hard work. What exactly is the difference? How do you know if you're doing one or the other? And why knowing how you're engaging in your workday and acting in pursuit of your goals is critical to the success of your interior design business, both in what you're able to achieve and the amount of satisfaction and fulfillment you can experience as a designer CEO.
Welcome to The Interior Design Business CEO, the only show for designers who are ready to confidently run and grow their businesses without the stress and anxiety. If you're ready to develop a bigger vision for your interior design business, free up your time, and streamline your days for productivity and profit, you're in the right place.
I'm Desi Creswell, an award-winning interior designer and certified life and business coach. I help interior designers just like you stop feeling overwhelmed so they can build profitable businesses they love to run. Are you ready to confidently lead your business, clients, and projects? Let's go.
Hello, designer, welcome back to the podcast. This is the last episode I'm sitting down to record before we head out for spring break. So that's kind of exciting. We're gonna be out for two weeks. And as I'm sitting down to do this, and after having outlined this, I'm just noticing for myself, right? We're always evaluating and gathering data that batching the podcast is definitely harder for me than batching something like my Monday Mindset newsletter that goes out.
Typically, I have a way of batching those with deciding topics, getting the rough draft, editing that happens on a monthly cycle. And really with this podcast, it is a different energy that's required of me as the person creating the content. And I just thought I'd share that because it's a great example of how one strategy can work really well for you in one area of your business and not as well in the others.
And in this case, you know, I do want to batch even though it's not my ideal because I want to have the podcast coming out on a weekly basis for you even when I'm not here. But it is a point of knowing yourself, knowing myself as the leader, and you knowing yourself as the leader of your company, which can really help you plan your workflow, your schedule, where you pull in support to the business in a way that really serves you. And this could be an opportunity for you to just pause and see how that might be true for you and how you can apply that to your business.
While we're talking about Monday Mindset, I do wanna tell you that if you love the podcast, you definitely should be subscribed to Monday Mindset. I've been sending out a Monday Mindset since the start of this business. And so that has been close to seven years, I think now. It'd be interesting to look back at the exact number that I've written.
But it is your bite-sized dose of coaching. And it's your bite-sized dose of the podcast. And it gets sent straight to your inbox every Monday morning to help you start the week off with intentionality and really reminding you to step into that CEO mindset as you start the week. So if you're not already subscribed, head over to desicreswell.com/resources. You'll find all the free resources that I have there, including that link to sign up for Monday Mindset and you'll get it the following Monday.
Today, what I wanna talk about is this concept of hustle versus hard work. This morning I was on my walk as usual and as usual also I was listening to a podcast. One of the guests on the podcast was Brad Stolberg, and as an aside,e I recently read his book The Practice of Groundedness: A Transformative Path to Success that Feeds- Not Crushes- Your Soul. It was a really great read and aligns very well with what I teach here. So, for book lovers, that would be a good one to check out.
Anyway, Brad was one of the three writers that were having this conversation in the podcast that I was listening to. And they all brought up this idea of how hard work is valorized in our culture. And it's something that's really prized and there's so much value put on hard work. At the same time, there's also been this reaction and sort of pushing in the opposite direction where hard work is now maybe bad, if we just use like a really simple term for it, or people just thinking about hard work as a product of a capitalist system meant to really grind us down and use us up.
This, of course, is an example of black and white thinking, which our brains tend towards, if something's good or bad. It's always or never, right? But as I was listening to the podcast, I started thinking about the pendulum swing that we've experienced with hustle culture. For a long time, I believe hard work sort of got rebranded and confused with hustle, meaning, you know, doing all of the things all the time at whatever cost. And this hustle culture or hustle trend really became prominent.
And now I think we've really also seen that narrative go out of style. I think the pandemic was a big part of this. It really helped people take a look at the negative impacts of this “do more, be more, do it fast” mentality. And while we aren't seeing as many Instagram posts or coffee mugs with catchy sayings like, “rise and grind,” there's still certainly varying levels of beliefs running in the background of our brain, leading us to put hustle type behavior on a pedestal, often unconsciously, and really allowing that type of behavior to be the driver of our business activities.
As someone who's definitely been in hustle mode in the past, striving and climbing and confusing hustling for hard work, and also being someone who's learned what it's like to know the difference and settle into sustainable hard work that really produces meaningful results for myself and my clients, I thought it'd be important to talk about what are the differences between the hustle and the hard work and what leads to one or the other.
Where you're spending the majority of your work time, in either of those energies of hustle or hard work, has a profound effect on your well-being, sustainability in your business, and ultimately the effectiveness of what you're able to create, whether that is income, the client experience, the projects you want to photograph, whatever the results or outcomes you're working toward in your business, where you start, the origination of the work really is important.
And that means today we're gonna be talking about how do you know if you're hustling or just working hard? What's the difference? Why does it matter so much? And what you need to do if you need to begin making a shift.
Let's just start by defining the two terms as I think of them, hustle and hard work. Hustle to me is really this constant chase. There's always something more to strive for, something more to do, more money to make, higher bars to jump over, no matter what it takes. With hustle, there's this disregard for you as the human being running the business.
The way I view it, hard work is really about being productive and results-oriented in a way that allows you to create what you really want. To do meaningful work, achieve goals that are important to you and those you serve, and that work doesn't get in the way of the other things you want in your life on a consistent basis.
Hustle is forced, whereas hard work is focused. Hustle is at your own expense, and hard work invests in your fulfillment and in your future.
Hustle comes from insecurity, and hard work comes from being grounded in yourself and your purpose. Hustle is constant, and hard work has periods of rest and recovery from that intensity. The pursuit of excellence, quality, and improvement in your work can feel really good, and it can also include periods of push. You noticed I said hard work can include intensity. What I want you also to hear though is there's stabilization that occurs over time.
Determining whether you're hustling or just working hard really isn't a formula or a certain number of hours worked, so much as it is the energy you bring to your day and what you're doing and the emotions fueling your work. Meaning, how do you feel when you work? What is the emotional fuel driving the actions that you take? With hustle, urgency and lack are often driving the show. There's a pushing motor behind the actions you take. It can feel kind of like this high alert state that you can't shut off. Whereas hard work feels grounded, focused, intentional.
This is so much of the work that I do with my clients, determining what are their goals, how do they want to get there, and how do they want to make really intentional use of their time that they are working, so that when it's been enough, and it's time to transition to their personal priorities, that mental space and bandwidth is available to them.
As we explore this idea of “am I hustling or am I working hard?”, a couple of things to consider. First, check in with yourself. What is the emotional fuel that is driving the actions I take, the goals that I set, the hours I work, the ways that I engage in my relationship with my business? Another great question you can ask yourself would be, is how I'm approaching my work creating a net negative or a net positive?
In anything we do, there's trade offs, there's things that we gain, there's things that we deplete, there's things that we do that give us energy and things that drain our energy, right? But overall, when you look at your relationship with your business, is it a net negative or is it a net positive? This is also where it can be really helpful to examine what are your values and is the way you're operating your business in alignment with what you say is most important to you in the season you're in?
Because, of course, values and what you wanna prioritize can and likely will shift over time. There may be periods of time when family or community is going to be the higher-prioritized value. There might be times when you do want to create a push and prioritize the work or certain aspects of the work. And that can all be okay. But in a situation where we have hard work, not hustle, we're not doing the work at our own expense. And there is a net positive to what we're creating.
As you've been listening to this thought exploration contrasting hustle and hard work, I want you to check in with yourself and see where you fall on this spectrum. Maybe you can reflect back to a time where you felt solidly in one thing or the other, using that to assess where you are right now. And with that, decide how do I want to move forward? Especially if you find it is hustle mode. What's a small shift you can start to make today?
Maybe that's just taking a moment as you transition tasks to pause and check in with what emotion is fueling your work. Or maybe it's taking time to decide what you're working on, pull your materials together, and get into a focus mode so that you get a higher level of work from the same amount of time. Doing that is hard work, and it's really rewarding.
Take what comes to mind as I'm offering this, or if something's coming to you outside of what I've just shared, and decide now what that next simple best step could be for you. Because of the type of energy expenditure and the underlying motivations behind that energy, and the chronic heightened emotional state behind the actions you take, hustling can have a really negative impact on your mental health, your physical health, damage your relationships, and leave you burned out, which could ultimately lead you to closing your interior design business.
Which is interesting because often we end up hustling because we want that business to be ultimately successful. We want the best and brightest and highest. And we end up working against what we truly want from that hustle energy. Hard work, fueled by focus and commitment, giving yourself a flexible framework that aligns with your values within which you approach your goals can really help you achieve more in the long run, create a higher quality of work, and be the source of great pride and satisfaction. So when it's time to work, it's okay to work hard, lean into it.
I mean, I know for me, if I'm going to be working, I don't want to dilly-dally and distract myself and be half in, half out. There is some intensity to that time. And that's okay, because it's also balanced by a chance to reset and refuel instead of staying in perpetual motion.
Hustling and hard work look different, and it feels different. And if you'd like my support with building a successful interior design business where you know how to get work done when it's time to work and also know how to turn off, be sure to check out https://desicreswell.com/coaching.
You can learn about my design to thrive customized coaching partnerships where we work together one-on-one, providing you with that holistic support that allows you and your business to thrive. Be sure to add your name to the waitlist because that is how you'll be the first one to know when a spot becomes available.
I'll be back next week with a brand new episode. So be sure to subscribe so that you'll automatically have that in your feed. That's one less thing for you to do. And in the meantime, if this topic really hit home, I highly recommend you go back and listen to episode 110, “Defining Enough,” and episode 46, “Arrival Fallacy.” Those are going to be great companion episodes to this one.
Until we speak again, I am wishing you a beautiful week.
Thanks for joining me for this week’s episode of The Interior Design Business CEO. If you want more tips, tools, and strategies, visit www.DesiCreswell.com, where you'll get immediate access to a variety of free resources to help you take what you learn on the podcast and put it into action. And if you love what you're hearing, be sure to rate, review, and follow the show wherever you listen to podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode. I'll talk to you next week.
Welcome to The Interior Design Business CEO, the only show for designers who are ready to confidently run and grow their businesses without the stress and anxiety. If you're ready to develop a bigger vision for your interior design business, free up your time, and streamline your days for productivity and profit, you're in the right place.
I'm Desi Creswell, an award-winning interior designer and certified life and business coach. I help interior designers just like you stop feeling overwhelmed so they can build profitable businesses they love to run. Are you ready to confidently lead your business, clients, and projects? Let's go.
Hello, designer, welcome back to the podcast. This is the last episode I'm sitting down to record before we head out for spring break. So that's kind of exciting. We're gonna be out for two weeks. And as I'm sitting down to do this, and after having outlined this, I'm just noticing for myself, right? We're always evaluating and gathering data that batching the podcast is definitely harder for me than batching something like my Monday Mindset newsletter that goes out.
Typically, I have a way of batching those with deciding topics, getting the rough draft, editing that happens on a monthly cycle. And really with this podcast, it is a different energy that's required of me as the person creating the content. And I just thought I'd share that because it's a great example of how one strategy can work really well for you in one area of your business and not as well in the others.
And in this case, you know, I do want to batch even though it's not my ideal because I want to have the podcast coming out on a weekly basis for you even when I'm not here. But it is a point of knowing yourself, knowing myself as the leader, and you knowing yourself as the leader of your company, which can really help you plan your workflow, your schedule, where you pull in support to the business in a way that really serves you. And this could be an opportunity for you to just pause and see how that might be true for you and how you can apply that to your business.
While we're talking about Monday Mindset, I do wanna tell you that if you love the podcast, you definitely should be subscribed to Monday Mindset. I've been sending out a Monday Mindset since the start of this business. And so that has been close to seven years, I think now. It'd be interesting to look back at the exact number that I've written.
But it is your bite-sized dose of coaching. And it's your bite-sized dose of the podcast. And it gets sent straight to your inbox every Monday morning to help you start the week off with intentionality and really reminding you to step into that CEO mindset as you start the week. So if you're not already subscribed, head over to desicreswell.com/resources. You'll find all the free resources that I have there, including that link to sign up for Monday Mindset and you'll get it the following Monday.
Today, what I wanna talk about is this concept of hustle versus hard work. This morning I was on my walk as usual and as usual also I was listening to a podcast. One of the guests on the podcast was Brad Stolberg, and as an aside,e I recently read his book The Practice of Groundedness: A Transformative Path to Success that Feeds- Not Crushes- Your Soul. It was a really great read and aligns very well with what I teach here. So, for book lovers, that would be a good one to check out.
Anyway, Brad was one of the three writers that were having this conversation in the podcast that I was listening to. And they all brought up this idea of how hard work is valorized in our culture. And it's something that's really prized and there's so much value put on hard work. At the same time, there's also been this reaction and sort of pushing in the opposite direction where hard work is now maybe bad, if we just use like a really simple term for it, or people just thinking about hard work as a product of a capitalist system meant to really grind us down and use us up.
This, of course, is an example of black and white thinking, which our brains tend towards, if something's good or bad. It's always or never, right? But as I was listening to the podcast, I started thinking about the pendulum swing that we've experienced with hustle culture. For a long time, I believe hard work sort of got rebranded and confused with hustle, meaning, you know, doing all of the things all the time at whatever cost. And this hustle culture or hustle trend really became prominent.
And now I think we've really also seen that narrative go out of style. I think the pandemic was a big part of this. It really helped people take a look at the negative impacts of this “do more, be more, do it fast” mentality. And while we aren't seeing as many Instagram posts or coffee mugs with catchy sayings like, “rise and grind,” there's still certainly varying levels of beliefs running in the background of our brain, leading us to put hustle type behavior on a pedestal, often unconsciously, and really allowing that type of behavior to be the driver of our business activities.
As someone who's definitely been in hustle mode in the past, striving and climbing and confusing hustling for hard work, and also being someone who's learned what it's like to know the difference and settle into sustainable hard work that really produces meaningful results for myself and my clients, I thought it'd be important to talk about what are the differences between the hustle and the hard work and what leads to one or the other.
Where you're spending the majority of your work time, in either of those energies of hustle or hard work, has a profound effect on your well-being, sustainability in your business, and ultimately the effectiveness of what you're able to create, whether that is income, the client experience, the projects you want to photograph, whatever the results or outcomes you're working toward in your business, where you start, the origination of the work really is important.
And that means today we're gonna be talking about how do you know if you're hustling or just working hard? What's the difference? Why does it matter so much? And what you need to do if you need to begin making a shift.
Let's just start by defining the two terms as I think of them, hustle and hard work. Hustle to me is really this constant chase. There's always something more to strive for, something more to do, more money to make, higher bars to jump over, no matter what it takes. With hustle, there's this disregard for you as the human being running the business.
The way I view it, hard work is really about being productive and results-oriented in a way that allows you to create what you really want. To do meaningful work, achieve goals that are important to you and those you serve, and that work doesn't get in the way of the other things you want in your life on a consistent basis.
Hustle is forced, whereas hard work is focused. Hustle is at your own expense, and hard work invests in your fulfillment and in your future.
Hustle comes from insecurity, and hard work comes from being grounded in yourself and your purpose. Hustle is constant, and hard work has periods of rest and recovery from that intensity. The pursuit of excellence, quality, and improvement in your work can feel really good, and it can also include periods of push. You noticed I said hard work can include intensity. What I want you also to hear though is there's stabilization that occurs over time.
Determining whether you're hustling or just working hard really isn't a formula or a certain number of hours worked, so much as it is the energy you bring to your day and what you're doing and the emotions fueling your work. Meaning, how do you feel when you work? What is the emotional fuel driving the actions that you take? With hustle, urgency and lack are often driving the show. There's a pushing motor behind the actions you take. It can feel kind of like this high alert state that you can't shut off. Whereas hard work feels grounded, focused, intentional.
This is so much of the work that I do with my clients, determining what are their goals, how do they want to get there, and how do they want to make really intentional use of their time that they are working, so that when it's been enough, and it's time to transition to their personal priorities, that mental space and bandwidth is available to them.
As we explore this idea of “am I hustling or am I working hard?”, a couple of things to consider. First, check in with yourself. What is the emotional fuel that is driving the actions I take, the goals that I set, the hours I work, the ways that I engage in my relationship with my business? Another great question you can ask yourself would be, is how I'm approaching my work creating a net negative or a net positive?
In anything we do, there's trade offs, there's things that we gain, there's things that we deplete, there's things that we do that give us energy and things that drain our energy, right? But overall, when you look at your relationship with your business, is it a net negative or is it a net positive? This is also where it can be really helpful to examine what are your values and is the way you're operating your business in alignment with what you say is most important to you in the season you're in?
Because, of course, values and what you wanna prioritize can and likely will shift over time. There may be periods of time when family or community is going to be the higher-prioritized value. There might be times when you do want to create a push and prioritize the work or certain aspects of the work. And that can all be okay. But in a situation where we have hard work, not hustle, we're not doing the work at our own expense. And there is a net positive to what we're creating.
As you've been listening to this thought exploration contrasting hustle and hard work, I want you to check in with yourself and see where you fall on this spectrum. Maybe you can reflect back to a time where you felt solidly in one thing or the other, using that to assess where you are right now. And with that, decide how do I want to move forward? Especially if you find it is hustle mode. What's a small shift you can start to make today?
Maybe that's just taking a moment as you transition tasks to pause and check in with what emotion is fueling your work. Or maybe it's taking time to decide what you're working on, pull your materials together, and get into a focus mode so that you get a higher level of work from the same amount of time. Doing that is hard work, and it's really rewarding.
Take what comes to mind as I'm offering this, or if something's coming to you outside of what I've just shared, and decide now what that next simple best step could be for you. Because of the type of energy expenditure and the underlying motivations behind that energy, and the chronic heightened emotional state behind the actions you take, hustling can have a really negative impact on your mental health, your physical health, damage your relationships, and leave you burned out, which could ultimately lead you to closing your interior design business.
Which is interesting because often we end up hustling because we want that business to be ultimately successful. We want the best and brightest and highest. And we end up working against what we truly want from that hustle energy. Hard work, fueled by focus and commitment, giving yourself a flexible framework that aligns with your values within which you approach your goals can really help you achieve more in the long run, create a higher quality of work, and be the source of great pride and satisfaction. So when it's time to work, it's okay to work hard, lean into it.
I mean, I know for me, if I'm going to be working, I don't want to dilly-dally and distract myself and be half in, half out. There is some intensity to that time. And that's okay, because it's also balanced by a chance to reset and refuel instead of staying in perpetual motion.
Hustling and hard work look different, and it feels different. And if you'd like my support with building a successful interior design business where you know how to get work done when it's time to work and also know how to turn off, be sure to check out https://desicreswell.com/coaching.
You can learn about my design to thrive customized coaching partnerships where we work together one-on-one, providing you with that holistic support that allows you and your business to thrive. Be sure to add your name to the waitlist because that is how you'll be the first one to know when a spot becomes available.
I'll be back next week with a brand new episode. So be sure to subscribe so that you'll automatically have that in your feed. That's one less thing for you to do. And in the meantime, if this topic really hit home, I highly recommend you go back and listen to episode 110, “Defining Enough,” and episode 46, “Arrival Fallacy.” Those are going to be great companion episodes to this one.
Until we speak again, I am wishing you a beautiful week.
Thanks for joining me for this week’s episode of The Interior Design Business CEO. If you want more tips, tools, and strategies, visit www.DesiCreswell.com, where you'll get immediate access to a variety of free resources to help you take what you learn on the podcast and put it into action. And if you love what you're hearing, be sure to rate, review, and follow the show wherever you listen to podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode. I'll talk to you next week.
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