Echelon Podcast, Episode 143 | Featuring Rich Smith
I started this episode with a premise: Effort is the one area where no one else should ever beat you. You may not control your height, strength, speed, intelligence, or circumstances, but you can control what you give.
When I first wrote the chapter "Never Let Anyone Out-Hustle You" in my book, The Quest for Leadership: How to Be the Hero in Your Story, I truly did mean anyone.
Then I tried to prove myself wrong.
The premise survived, but it changed.
After having time to ponder it, challenge it, and test it against some of the strongest arguments against hustle culture, I realized the race was never really against someone else.
You should always strive to out-hustle who you were yesterday so that you move closer to becoming the person you want your future mentor-self to be.
This isn't about beating someone else. It's not about being the loudest person in the room, working the most hours, or proving something to your boss, your peers, or your competition.
When I say never let anyone out-hustle you, the "anyone" I'm really talking about is you.
The future version of you.
The mentor you are in the process of becoming is being built by how the current version of you chooses to show up right now.
That's the premise behind Chapter One of my next book, and it's what Rich Smith and I spent the better part of an evening unpacking on Episode 143 of Echelon.
You Control What You Give
The foundation of the whole philosophy is this: you may not control your height, your strength, your speed, your intelligence, or your circumstances. But you can control what you give from what you have available.
That last part matters.
Giving 100% doesn't mean producing the same output every day. Your circumstances affect what you have available. Some days your 100% will accomplish far more than it will on others. The standard isn't identical output. The standard is honesty about what you had available and what you chose to give from it.
I know this sounds simple; however, from my personal and observed experience, it isn't.
Perhaps it is just human nature that we want to resist anything that, on the surface, sounds challenging. We say things such as, "That's impossible," "That's going to be hard," or "I can't do that."
But there is almost always something we can do, something we can control, and something we can improve upon.
Let's stop with the "can't" mentality and start framing our thinking around what is possible right now.
Moving forward can lead to rewards, but challenging ourselves is how we grow. We don't have to accomplish everything we set out to do for the effort to have value. We have to give what we have, learn from what happens, and determine where our effort should go next.
The journey is what matters.
The outcome is information.
It is evidence of what worked, what didn't, and how we should direct our effort next.
Rich said it well: "Those uncontrollables are what people focus on instead of asking what can I do to make up for them."
Circumstances change. Talent varies. The hand we were dealt is different for every person.
But what you choose to give from what you have available?
That's yours.
Working Hard Is a Standard of Conduct
People push back on hustle.
They call it toxic. They say it's unsustainable. They say you can work hard and still fail, so what's the point?
They're not wrong that hard work doesn't guarantee success.
You can work hard and not work smart. You can grind without direction. You can, as I said on the episode, be the gerbil on the wheel.
To me, life is very much about failures and struggle. Of course you can give 100% and still fail.
The point is to embrace the journey because the journey itself is the evolution.
Here is where I believe I didn't make the connection clearly enough during the episode: working hard includes working smart.
We don't work for work's sake.
We intentionally put in the hard work that moves us closer to who our future mentor-self will be.
Working hard is not a strategy for winning. It's a standard of conduct.
It's who you are.
To say you shouldn't work hard because it doesn't guarantee success is a category error.
My foundation isn't transactional: If I work hard, I'll get the outcome I want.
That's not what I'm arguing.
My foundation is simpler:
I'm going to give everything I have.
And the evidence of whether I did that comes back to one place.
The mirror.
Did I give everything I had?
No one else is going to know.
That question is between you and yourself.
Recovery vs. Escape: Know the Difference
One of the best moments of the episode came when we were working through the steelman argument that maximizing effort can actually reduce performance.
Beyond a certain threshold, additional effort can produce worse decisions, slower recovery, and more errors.
I agree.
But there's a distinction that doesn't get made enough.
When I asked Rich what he thought was really happening when someone who could be working chooses not to, he landed on a word that I think is exactly right.
"Escape," he said. "You're escaping responsibility. A task. Something you have to accomplish."
Recovery is not the enemy of hustle.
Recovery is part of the hustle.
Perhaps I wasn't strong enough in my original declaration of embracing the grind because, in my mind, recovery and rest have always been part of that journey.
This is one of the reasons I'm doing the podcast and testing my theories on the fly. I want to challenge them, find the weaknesses, and make them sharper and clearer.
Recovery is intentional.
Recovery moves you forward.
Escape doesn't.
At best, escape keeps you exactly where you are. Just as likely, you regress.
Know which one you are choosing.
Talent Takes a Day Off. You Don't.
My dad gave me this one.
And it's where the whole hustle philosophy comes from for me personally.
You give a hundred percent, a hundred percent of the time.
Because those who are better than you know they're better. And because they know it, eventually they're going to take a play off.
You won't.
You get to first because of it.
Then second.
Then third.
Then home.
All because they knew they were better and acted like it.
It's the tortoise and the hare.
We've all heard it. Most people treat it like a children's story.
I treat it like an operating principle.
I believe it is rare to come across people who are truly talented and also have the drive to become better every day. More often, we hear about people who had talent but not the drive.
They are able to get away with a lot based on attributes they were born with, and they may still be better than many of us at a lot of things.
But eventually they reach a plateau.
Plenty of people have talent.
Character is rarer.
And this is also why I have intentionally shifted the focus back to our race, not someone else's race.
The person next to you isn't the measuring stick.
Measure your journey against where you used to be, where you are now, and where you are going.
Out-hustle who you were yesterday.
The Journal Doesn't Lie
I talk about journaling throughout the book, and I brought it up in this episode for a specific reason.
You can't, or rather you shouldn't, lead yourself somewhere you haven't consciously chosen to go.
Be honest with your journal.
You said you were going to do these things.
Did you do them?
If not, why?
What was within your control?
What wasn't?
Look at those answers honestly because that's what will help you get better at setting goals, predicting what you can accomplish, and holding yourself accountable to yourself.
Delayed goals are not abandoned goals.
I have things on my list I haven't done yet. I haven't done them because I've intentionally decided something else is more important right now.
That's not failure.
That's prioritization with honesty behind it.
What I don't accept is delaying something for convenience and then calling it a decision.
Your journal knows the difference.
And so do you.
This Is About You
Here's the thing about self-leadership that I think a lot of leadership content gets wrong.
It positions the work as preparation for leading others.
Learn these skills so you can build a better team.
Develop these habits so you can become a better manager.
That's not the point.
The point is to become.
The mentor you will eventually be to someone else is being constructed right now, in the reps you take when nobody's watching, in the choices you make when escaping would be easier, and in the honesty you bring to your own journal at the end of the day.
Never let anyone out-hustle you doesn't mean run harder than the person next to you.
Don't out-hustle everyone else.
Out-hustle who you were yesterday.
Become the person your future self would want as a mentor.
Never let the future version of yourself look back and see that you coasted.
Listen to Episode 143 of Echelon wherever you get your podcasts.
And if this resonates, I'd challenge you to ask yourself one question today:
Did I give everything I had?
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