Conscious Hustle

How to execute at a high level while staying present

Is hustle inherently bad?

I’ve been sitting with this question recently as I’ve been stepping into a new chapter where I’m working hard again.

I have no choice. We’re buying a house. Third kid on the way. Pressure’s on fella! It’s time to start earning. And if I’m being honest it’s not just out of necessity. I’m enjoying it. The warrior energy is alive in me right now.

So I’ve been working more intensely than I have in years. One might even say I’m HUSTLING again dun dun.

“Bad Spinks, no hustle, only calm”, says the tiny yogi sitting on my shoulder.

“Yeahhh, that’s not going to work anymore. We have real-world needs. Time to get after it,” says the tiny entrepreneur sitting on my other shoulder.

Maybe they’re both right.

Somewhere along the way, we decided that hustle was inherently toxic. That grinding, pushing, and executing at high speeds was fundamentally at odds with consciousness, presence, and well-being. It’s too aggressive. Too masculine.

But I’m realizing that I no longer buy into the story. I’d like to let my inner Gary Vee out of the basement and explore what it could look like to hustle consciously.

Can one execute at a high level while staying present and aware? What would it look like to bring my full presence to periods of intense work?

Hustle is an important part of life. Whether it was our ancestors chasing down a gazelle for hours on end, or a team cranking to ship a software product, "hustle mode" is simply part of human-ing.

The question for me is no longer whether to hustle... it's how.

When Hustle is Blind

I know what hustle feels like when it’s not conscious.

I get tunnel vision. I lock into the work but lose myself. I’m disconnected from my body. There’s a constant feeling of urgency, fear, and anxiety. And instead of giving myself the space and time to be with those uncomfortable feelings, I try to work through it. I get a lot done, but it always comes with a cost.

I think I picked up this habit back in college. I was a habitual procrastinator. I’d put off studying for a big test until the night before, then lock myself in the library and grind for hours. Head down, headphones in, totally in it. And more often than not, it worked. I’d ace the exam. The adrenaline would carry me through, and I’d get the reward on the other side.

That pattern: wait until the pressure hits, then go all in, became a kind of internal logic. A survival strategy. A belief that if I just push hard enough, I can pull anything off.

The problem is that the strategy followed me into adulthood. But unlike school, where the work is handed out in neatly packaged assignments and it’s clear when something is “done,” startups don’t work like that. The mountain is never-ending. There’s no final exam. No natural stopping point. You can lock yourself in the proverbial library every night and still wake up to more to-dos, more expectations, more unfinished business.

The cycle becomes endless.

The Cost of Blind Hustle

While I blindly hustle, my body “keeps the score” as they say.

My shoulders tighten. My jaw clenches. My breath gets shallow. My heart races. Sometimes I snap into a moment of awareness and realize I haven’t moved in hours. I’ve ignored hunger. Skipped water. Forgotten to pee. It’s like my whole system narrows down to a single output: execute.

That’s the short-term version of blind hustle. The kind of sprint that’s effective in bursts but unsustainable.

Then there’s the long arc: the hustle mentality that seeps into weeks, months, and years. The one where there's always something urgent, where every day feels like a race, where I can't remember the last time I truly exhaled. At first, it was just about keeping up, but eventually, it became the water I swam in.

That’s when presence disappears. And while I’m not paying attention:

• The impact on my psyche, body, and soul compounds

• I lose sight of whether I’m even sprinting in the right direction

• I stop noticing the subtle cues of the people around me

• I start feeling disconnected from myself and from the world

• I lose my creative spark, I feel lost, I burn out

And still, somehow, hustle often felt like the right thing to do.

Because that’s the story I inherited. That effort equals value. That momentum means progress. That if it doesn’t feel hard, it’s not worth doing. That if I’m not moving, I’m falling behind.

There has to be a better way.

Conscious Hustle

The better way is conscious hustle.

There’s nothing wrong with hustle itself. It’s just that without awareness, it becomes a trance. A loop. A way of outsourcing my self-worth to productivity.

What I’m learning, and practicing, is a different way to hustle, one that doesn’t require me to abandon myself.

In Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Shunryu Suzuki writes:

“Calmness of mind does not mean you should stop your activity. Real calmness should be found in activity itself.”

That’s it.

Conscious hustle isn’t about working less or staying in perpetual stillness.

It’s about being awake, so we know when to move and when to be still. It’s about staying connected to the body and its signals, to one’s values, to the people around us, to our environment.

Blind hustle is fear-based. It’s about control and urgency.

Conscious hustle is driven by presence, integrity, and self-awareness.

I think of Steph Curry on the sideline in the middle of a high-stakes game: locked in but breathing deeply, cycling between maximum effort on the court and deep rest on the bench. He knows how to stay connected to himself when the pressure is high.

Or LeBron James sleeping 12 hours a night. That’s not indulgent. That’s how you play the long game. That’s someone who understands that their inner system is the instrument of performance.

Conscious hustle means using your work as a mirror. To see your patterns. To learn how you react under pressure, and choose an aligned response.

It’s using the work rather than letting the work use you.

How to Hustle Consciously

This is an ongoing experiment for me as I step into this more intensive period of work.

Some of the things I’m doing to stay conscious while hustling:

• Maintaining presence and awareness practices like daily meditation and journaling to reveal my patterns and experiences

• Practicing nervous system regulation techniques like breathing, movement, touch, and sound

• Reducing other things that raise my cortisol levels, like intense TV shows

• Using a timer to remind me to check in on my mind and body every 45 minutes during intense work cycles

• Reciting a “work sutra” before I sit down to work to remind me of why I work and keep me grounded

• Keeping my values on a post-it note on my desk at all times

• Time blocking my days for work, fitness, family time, nature, and rest

• Working with my support network: my team, wife, therapist, coaches, and community

• Asking myself regularly if the urgency I feel is real, if I’m coming from fear or enoughness, and what I might be avoiding by throwing myself into work

• Reminding myself that this moment of intensity is just a phase, and that when it no longer serves me, I can let it go

I fail at least once every day. I fall into the trance. I forget the practices. I lose touch with myself. But this is the practice — notice that I’m lost, and gently bring myself back to awareness, over and over again.

I’d love to hear from you:

1. What would conscious hustle look like in your life?

2. How do you stay conscious while working hard?

3. Is conscious hustle possible? Or am I just fooling myself?

Drop a reply or comment and let me know.

Until next week…

Stay enough,
David

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P.S.

If you’re a leader navigating a season of intensity and want support staying grounded, I’ve got a few coaching spots open. Reach out. I’d love to talk.