The Other Hustle Culture

The word “hustle” has Dutch roots and originally meant to shake or toss. From there, it only grew more nefarious: to push or knock a person about and eventually, to carry out a con, such as pick-pocketing.

Today, the pendulum has swung back around to generally more positive connotations. We respect a side hustle, like making music at night while working days as a lawyer. We tend to associate hustling with working hard, striving, trying to make something of yourself.

This fits nicely with the old Protestant work ethic that supposedly (!) turned America into an industrious powerhouse that ruled the world for a time. You won’t make it (“it” referring to the attainment of wealth and power) if you don’t put some hustle in your step. Lazy is out; hustling is in. Silicon Valley is all about the hustle—including, no doubt, a bit of the old con.

The rise of the term hustle culture shows how ingrained the notion has become. If culture broadly defines what we value and pay attention to at any given moment, then hustling has risen to takes its place at or near the top of behaviors we admire.

I found a quote—surely it’s apocryphal—attributed to Abraham Lincoln, where he said, “Things may come to those who wait … but only the things left by those who hustle.”

Nobody wants to come in last. If you hustle, you may not only beat someone else to the punch, but also demonstrate that you’re serious about and committed to whatever it is you’re hustling toward.

In a sense, hustling has become its own reward: a way to show you’re making a supreme effort.

The idea that you’re not serious about making art if you don’t hustle the work—hurry it along, get it done, get it shown, get it marketed and hyped and blasted out to the world—goes against the deeper grain of what making art is about.

I meet so many writers and artists tortured by their self-perceived lack of productivity. As if they’re not hustling hard enough to matter or be taken seriously.

This is such misapplied bullshit.

I’d like to reappropriate the word hustle and strip it back to its original Dutch roots as a means of shaking or tossing—not people, not victims, but ideas. Thought processes. Powers of concentration.

What if hustling could mean we’re deeply contemplating? Turned inward, listening to our imaginations, to our souls whispering memories, stories, connections…

What if artistic hustling centered on the emergence of creativity?

The pace of such hustling might be glacial in comparison to outward-facing hustle culture. But so what? That’s fine. Good, even.

Let’s spend more time sitting quietly with our minds—paying attention to the invisible but teeming inner hustling where we allow our imaginations to work freely, outside the strictures of time and results.

Who knows?

This quiet hustle, which the outside world isn’t privy to, and can’t judge or measure, might lead you to write a poem, draft a new story, or compose new music.

This may not be easy, but at least we’ll be hustling purely for our own benefit, rather than showing off to the world what go-getters we are.

My new novel TENT CITY, is getting some amazing reviews —and now you can download the companion BOOK CLUB KIT, a rich resource for discussing the book!

“Amy L. Bernstein’s powerful novel reflects modern times with a twist, offering powerful insights into groups that used to work together and now find themselves seemingly at odds, but connected in unusual ways.

“The food for thought generated by this social and psychological examination will prove especially compelling for readers seeking literary reflections of present and future dilemmas surrounding haves and have-nots, simmering frustrations on all sides, and the raise of poverty that both births Tent City and portends its ultimate collapse, as well.

--D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review