Hustle

Good artists hustle. They stretch their limits of imagination. They welcome discomfort. The others are busy drawing more sea-shells and palm trees.

Good musicians work two jobs so they can play their own music at gigs. Gigs are tough. Gigs need you to hustle. The others are pretty happy with their status quo in their coffee-house style playing covers.

A monk hustles. Zen is tough. "Don't-know mind" does not come easy. Meditation is really hard. They put in the time and the effort where others give up and quit.

Hugh MacLeod hustled when everyone told him it was worthless to do so.

"If your plan depends on you suddenly being "discovered" by some big shot, your plan will probably fail. Nobody suddenly discovers anything. Things are made slowly and in pain." -- Hugh MacLeod, Ignore Everybody

Hustle is a good marker of people I want to be around. These people say "What if" when they can say, "Will do." They are not happy with good. They seek better. Not more, but better. And they want to find better themselves.

Casey Neistat says this in his own way in the video below.

Challenge the Tracking

I wrote about baby steps and tracking a few days ago. I should probably specify that the most important part of that tracking exercise is what we are tracking. To find out, we must challenge the thing we decided to track...validate the new thing to track if any, then challenge it again.

Is that thing we are tracking the right thing?
Should we be tracking another thing?

This is similar to the don't know mind that zen masters teach. We start down a path and get too much vested in that path. We get cocky. We forget to ask, "does this still make sense"? We start protecting our ego. The objective shifts from the quality of the path to the quality of us. And we want to protect the quality of us.

I am tracking my food intake in an app that tracks carbs, fats and proteins. My focus is on carbs.
Is that focus enough?
Is it the right thing to focus on?
What about the quality of carbs I am consuming?
What about proteins and fats?
When should I start exercising more?
Should I stay with my gym or should I join a group focused gym?

Lots of questions...