Summer Equinox, Summer of Unhustling, and Redefining Success

It’s the longest day of the year, and for once, I’m not dragging myself out of bed. I’m buzzing, even after a morning spent wrangling flights across Europe. It’s like living inside Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, minus the comedy and with way more browser tabs open.

Travel used to be easy. Now it’s a full-contact sport. So I pad my schedule, slow down, and actually taste each city instead of just ticking it off a list.

This Fall, I’m heading to Happiness Camp to hang out with the people actually shaping the future of work, not just talking about it. And after three years, I finally get to hug my family again. Europe, I’m coming for you. If you’re in Porto, Lisbon, London, or Bulgaria, let’s grab a coffee or a walk. Real connection beats another Zoom call any day.

Bulgaria’s calling me for an Unhustle Gathering. It’s home. If you’re curious, reach out. Last time I wandered through Plovdiv, I remembered what slow living actually feels like. Spend a few days in the Rhodope mountains and you’ll meet people who don’t care about AI, hustle, or even WiFi. It’s a reset button for your soul.

As I write this, I see the irony in what I’m trying to do. I’m planning on traveling this Fall spending time in airports and on planes, chasing down hugs and conversations, while also trying to launch something new without falling back into old hustle habits. But this idea won’t let me go. It keeps me up at night until I put it on paper.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post titled The Machine You’re Running On. Go ahead and then come back to finish why I’m starting Summer of Unhustling. I’m tired of the Default world, Hustle Culture, and busyness as worthiness and the idea that success is all about net worth, achievements, and accolades.

Ever get hit with a great idea, then another, and suddenly you’re drowning in to-dos again? Welcome back to Burnout City. I know the route by heart.

That’s almost where I landed with this. Summer of Unhustling started to look like another project: build a fancy landing page, crank out more content, show up daily, send a flood of emails. No thanks.

But here’s the truth. My book comes back from the editor tomorrow, and it’s going to need some serious TLC. It’s summer in Baja, the heat is rising, and slowing down feels like the only sane move. I’ve got 90 days to focus, connect, and build before the book drops.

So instead of making these things fight for my attention, I’m rolling Summer of Unhustling into what I already do: the fun, creative, soul-filling work that made me start Unhustle in the first place. I get to set the pace and choose the path. That’s my measure of real freedom. And I invite you along for the journey - your journey of how to do things differently.

I’ll be sharing tips, resources, strategies, stories, evidence-based ideas, and podcasts that shaped the Unhustle book — plus behind-the-scenes of building a business without burning out. All of it in a real, laid-back way, the only way that’s true to something called Unhustle. A book, a brand, a movement, a state of being.

And yes, I’ll show you my terrible napkin doodles. Because sometimes the best ideas start with a pen, a napkin, and zero artistic talent. I’m seriously thinking of illustrating my book with napkins I bought for less than a dollar and a pen. But of course, you’ll be the judge and tell me if you want something more polished. I just get the sense that our brains are so tired of machine generated stuff that we could all use a break.

​Seriously though, here’s what it looks like behind the scenes. A creative mess. And this is exactly what Summer of Unhustling will be - a messy journey of returning home to ourselves. Creativity, and all.

If you want in on this Summer of Unhustling, just show up here. I’ll drop daily notes, nudges, inspiration, and my weekly letter. No pressure, no overwhelm. If anything you won’t have to do anything more, but rather the opposite—you’ll have to do less.

Unhustle with me this summer. Tell me what you’re up to. We don’t need more information. We need to actually do the thing.

I’ll share what I’m doing differently to build my own Desire Path—what I call Life Wealth. That’s health, time, real relationships, experiences that crack you open, and work that matters. This is what I found in my research: a life that actually feels good, not just looks good. Soon, I’ll share the Life Wealth Assessment so you can see where you stand before and after your own Summer of Unhustling.

To get there, we have to ditch the old stories about success we picked up from the Default World. Time to unlearn what’s holding us back.

Thinking about how we define success, I pulled a few quotes from other books:

“I’ve always thought that only one thing mattered, your own career, and like a general in battle I would sacrifice anything to my work and I would not let myself be fond of anything I could not lose. But now I have learned that you have no success while you are alive; the only success that counts while you live is making money and I refused that. So I am going to work for success after I am dead, and I am going to be very careful of the troops [family] and have no casualties that I can help, and I am going to take pleasure in the things that I have while I have them.”

— Ernest Hemingway, On Writing

I think about this one a lot. A man who spent his whole life chasing achievement only to realize that pleasure was something you take in real time, not after you’ve “earned” it. It didn’t end well and I’m still mad about it. So much wasted talent.

“The growing conviction that individuality matters is also transforming the way we think about success... When participants were asked what constituted society’s definition of success, the two most common responses by far were wealth and status. But when asked if they agreed with this definition, only 18 percent reported completely or mostly sharing society’s view, with 40 percent asserting that they had moved away from society’s view over the course of their life... Though 74 percent declared that according to society’s definition it was ‘someone who is powerful,’ 91 percent said that for them personally, it was ‘someone who is purpose-driven.’”

— Todd Rose & Ogi Ogas, Dark Horse

That gap between what we think we should want and what we actually crave? That’s the whole game. Most of us are chasing purpose in secret while pretending we care about power.

“Ken explained to me: ‘I interviewed a guy who had a million in the bank and I asked, “Do you feel rich?” He said no — because he didn’t yet have ten million dollars. But I also interviewed a guy who had ten million dollars, and he didn’t feel rich because, he said, “I don’t yet have a private jet.” And then I interviewed a man with a private jet and asked him if he felt rich. He said no — ‘cause his jet was only a six-seater!’ These millionaires were effectively trying to catch the horizon. You can’t catch the horizon. As you get closer, it moves away.”

— Vishen Lakhiani, The Buddha and the Badass

This one cracks me up, because I’ve met those guys. Hell, I used to be one of them - minus the 10 million and the private jet but definitely making decent money while having no time for real living.

“More than a decade of groundbreaking research in positive psychology and neuroscience has proven, in no uncertain terms, that the relationship between success and happiness works the other way around. We now know that happiness is the precursor to success, not merely the result.”

— Shawn Achor, The Happiness Advantage

To me, the new definition of success — Life Wealth — comes down to the ability to pursue both quality of life and success in business. To build a big career and a big life. Actually, let’s put that in reverse. Work should fit into life. Quality of life comes from your health, your free time, novel and interesting experiences that make you wiser and shift your perspective, and rich relationships. Success in business comes from meaningful work.

We’ll dig into the why and how of all this as summer rolls on.

But here’s what I’m currently doing for this Summer of Unhustling:

• I’m pulling back from coffee and alcohol. I like a glass of wine and a coffee in the morning, but it’s getting really hot here, and my body and my brain need to stay hydrated for clarity. Don’t worry, you don’t have to do this. You do you.

• Committing to moving my body more frequently - did I say it’s getting hot? So, swimming in the ocean is awesome, except that Portuguese man-of-war are abundant this year. But I figured I could go to a strength-training class so the group energy would motivate me, and I could do some hot yoga, natural style.

• I get to work somewhere between 9am and 11am and finish between 4pm and 6pm. It all depends on what I do. Some days, I don’t work at all. Some weekends, I work. Some I don’t. I think on average, I work about 35 hours a week. I think that’s enough. My brain has its own schedule, and it keeps going even after I close my laptop. Which is why active recovery is the way to go instead of watching Netflix.

• I’ve been having trouble falling asleep lately, but I still get really solid, deep REM sleep. I wear a watch that measures that. Although I don’t like to track anything else, I know how I feel. (Hence #1)

• I’m planning to get a lot better at workflows and systems so I can leverage AI to handle the work I don’t have time for, while leaving the creative part to me.

• My dog Taz barks at me if I’m still working before 4:45 - 5:07. I didn’t train her, but somehow she knows. She definitely wants her beach walk every day, plus that’s where my best ideas come from (and neuroscience confirms that). Psychologists refer to this as the "incubation effect". Your subconscious mind rummages through your mental attic, dusting off old ideas, rules, and facts, and stitching them together to form something entirely new.

  So don’t feel bad about booking your summer vacation now.

That’s enough for now.

So here we go. A new experiment, a new way of living. Welcome to unhustling.

Summer of Unhustling starts today.

You’re invited to participate.