Don’t Fall For The False Hustle


“It’s urgent!”


When you hear a flustered customer utter these words, do you kick into high gear, get stressed out and start scrambling?

Have you taken on last minute requests that had you staying late at work, skipping personal appointments and sacrificing your sleep?

Did it turn out that the urgent task really wasn’t that urgent after all? The payout you got from the whole fiasco was a work product of reduced quality, poor productivity for the rest of the day, zero sense of accomplishment and massive eye bags.

It sounds like you got sucked into someone else’s false hustle.

The next time you hear that a task or project is “urgent”, do this:

  • Take the word “urgent” with a pinch of salt.
  • Negotiate on a more realistic timeline, and explain why more time is needed.
  • Implement a priority surcharge if the job absolutely needs to be done within the short timeline; in my personal experience, the urgency miraculously disappears a lot of the time.
  • If it’s likely to affect your overall performance and quality of work, don’t be afraid to say no.

Don’t feel like a mean or lazy person when you do the above. You just simply need to protect your resources and energy. You need to maintain your sanity, uphold your quality of work and stay productive and efficient so that you can be fair to your other customers.

Life’s too short to be hustled over a false hustle.

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Vicki Lew

Vicki Lew Firestarter & Co-Founder of Brew Creative Pte Ltd. A self-taught web designer, Vicki first discovered her knack for design during the course of her film studies at Ngee Ann Polytechnic. Eventually, she packed her bags and moved to Melbourne, Australia to pursue her BA in Multimedia Design at the National School of Design, Swinburne University of Technology. A chance meeting at a networking session saw Vicki working collaboratively with a graphic designer named Gobbs Lim. As the saying goes, two heads are better than one - in 2009, they decided to put all their left and right brains together and started a partnership called Brew Creative Pte Ltd. Vicki has handled projects for businesses of all sizes and industries, but her soft spot is working with start-ups and SMEs. She can often be found breaking out the cheerleading pom-poms to support and encourage her friends to follow their entrepreneurial dreams. In her spare time, Vicki enjoys exploring new cuisines, putting together a home-cooked meal, nerding out at the museum, getting crafty or sipping her favourite craft beers.

This post was first published on Brew Creative blog and has been reposted on Executive Lifestyle with the author’s permission.

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