Do you have to hustle to be successful?

I mean, do you want your eyes to bleed out?

I remember when I watched my first Gary Vaynerchuck speech. I got super pumped to work eight or more hours a day with no breaks until my eyes bled out and I reached my goal. No help, no eating, and no sleeping until I can become successful tomorrow.

Well, I tried doing this and one thing happened: I could only do this eight hour or more workday for a couple days straight.

Here’s why I only work 1–3 hours per day on my writing business.

It takes up less time per day.

Everyone would rather work for one hour than eight hours a day. Unless you want to be the next Mark Zuckerberg (that’s awesome but not for me).

It’s easier to maintain consistency.

There’s a great thing that happens when you work for a small amount every day, it’s called compounding. Ayodeji Awosika once said that he only worked on his writing business for about 1–2 hours every day. After about four years of doing this, his success skyrocketed exponentially thanks to that added on hourly compound interest. Nicolas Cole got his large following in about five years by posting one Quora answer per day. He also compounded and achieved great success.

It’s a lot easier to maintain consistent growth over a long period of time by lowering the amount of time per day you spend on your business. You don’t have to kill yourself all the time, just work a little bit every day and it will add up.

Five years isn’t that long to wait.

I get it, a lot of people are impatient, so here’s a little time stamp for you right now.

It will take you about five years to be successful at your craft if you spend at least one hour on it every day.

It’s a sweet spot for success and it’s not crazy long or insanely short. I think the average person can wait five years for their success to pop off. Does it require vast amounts of patience still? Hell yeah. But is it a good estimate for all my impatient people out there? Beggars can’t be choosers.

Five years to grow shitty writing blog to a six-figure behemoth is more than enough for anyone if you write every day for an hour.

It teaches you better discipline.

In all of those success stories I mentioned above, all of them have one thing in common — other than the five-year time span — they require an insane amount of discipline.

Now I’m not saying that hustling for eight hours a day doesn’t teach you discipline. But to me, hustling for eight hours a day is more like teaching you how to be a fried potato with no cool-down time. You’re on overdrive no matter what.

Studying for a test for a couple hours a day gives you greater discipline than studying for five. Those are horror stories from kids who probably hate their parents right now.

If you can sit still for one hour. That’s all of the discipline you need to run a successful business. Mic drop.

Final Thought

The main takeaway I want you to get from this article is that success doesn’t have to be a skyscraper of hard work every day. It’s possible to relax and still have success.

You can be just as successful as the next person in about five years by working one hour per day.

Of course it can be faster if you work longer, but ask yourself if you want that first. Do you want to spend hours each day grinding out work with bloodshot eyes and a cup to piss in next to your chair?

That’s not something I want. For your own mental health, hopefully that’s not something you want.

So don’t hurt yourself okay? Put in the work, but don’t kill yourself in the process. Let’s put our heads down and see what happens in five years. Go.