The Dark Side of Hustle Culture: Always on. Always Empty
Ever feel like you’re constantly hustling but not really moving forward?
Lisa and Cindy call out the illusion of hustle that so many high performers fall into: busy doesn’t always mean productive. In this episode, they reveal the power of controlled urgency over chaotic motion and share how to hustle with intention instead of burnout. Discover practical strategies to prioritize, plan, and push with purpose, just like a jockey guiding a racehorse to victory. If you’re ready to stop spinning your wheels and start winning long term, this episode is your blueprint to hustle smarter. Tune in, reset your mindset, and learn how to hustle with power, not panic.
Your next level awaits. This is more than just a pep talk; it’s a tactical roadmap to shift from empty to strategic hustling.
Episode Chapter Markers
00:00 Introduction
02:00 The Illusion of Hustle
08:03 Controlled Urgency: A New Approach
14:09 Avoiding Burnout: Practical Tips
Must-Hear Insights and Key Moments
The Illusion of Hustle – Why being busy doesn’t always mean you’re productive and how hustle without strategy leads to burnout.
Controlled Urgency Explained – Redefining hustle as urgency with intention and discipline, not chaotic nonstop motion.
Jockey & Horse Analogy – How strategic restraint in the race mirrors pacing your hustle for maximum results.
Ruthless Prioritization – The importance of focusing on top goals and accounts to move the needle effectively.
Infiltrating Your Territory – Using small, strategic moves like checking the OR board to create new opportunities.
Avoiding Burnout – Why building white space and self-care routines are essential to reset and refocus.
From Panic to Power – Moving hustle energy from frantic stress to controlled, confident action.
Call to Action: Declutter Your Calendar – Eliminate exhaustion by intentionally planning your time for greater impact.
Words of Wisdom: Standout Quotes from This Episode
Not all hustle is created equal—there’s hustle with power, and then there’s hustle with panic. - Anneliese Rhodes
Hustle without direction is just high functioning chaos, and chaos does not win long term. - Anneliese Rhodes
It’s not glamorous to hustle nonstop; sometimes you’re just spinning your wheels. - Anneliese Rhodes
Busy doesn’t equal effective. We often glorify busy but it’s not true productivity. - Cynthia Ficara
More hustle doesn’t open more doors—it might just bring you more stress. - Cynthia Ficara
Are you sprinting towards your goal or just running in place? - Cynthia Ficara
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We'd Love to Hear Your Stories!
Even in life’s darkest moments, we have the power to create change. We’d love to hear from YOU — whether you’ve taken a leap of faith, overcome adversity, or found purpose through a challenge. Share your stories with us in the comments or send us a DM. Let’s keep the conversation going and continue lifting each other up.
A Team Dklutr production
Blog Transcript:
Note: We use AI transcription so there may be some inaccuracies
Anneliese Rhodes: Here we go.
Cynthia Ficara: Declutter. This is our snippet. Hey everyone. If we pulled up your calendar right now, tell me what you would see. Would I see strategy or what? I see lots of information for survival, back to back calls. Constant motion in your hustling hard, but are you really moving forward or just running in circles?
Anneliese Rhodes: Because, let's get real here. Y'all hustle is not created equal in this episode. Wait, hang on. Let me redo that. Okay. You were great. I'm just gonna start mine. All right, declutter here. I'm gonna restart mine. Let's get real y'all. Here's the truth. Not all hustle is actually created equal, and today we're calling out that chaos disguised as your productivity and getting real about what it takes to really hustle with intention instead of burnout.
Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening to everyone again, and welcome to another episode of Secrets in Medical Device Sales, where we give you guys tips, tricks, strategies for everyday excellence, and we so appreciate y'all continuing to tune in. Today is another great episode.
Moving Beyond Busy to Intentional Progress
Cynthia Ficara: I know I'm excited because, you know, I think this one really applies to me.
Um, and I think that I'm a perfect example of stopping what I'm doing in my tracks, looking at myself and reassessing what I need to do. So today's topic is really all about hustle culture, and if you are somebody who is high energy driven, wanting to. Fill the calendar to no ends feeling like, what do I do if I don't have any time and I have to fill every bit of time?
You know, sometimes that's not always productive and that's not always in our best interest. I'm saying that because I have to tell myself that sometimes frequently. So, hustle culture, that's really our topic today. And so. Today. In this episode, we want you to kind of have some takeaways and what you're gonna learn about is controlled chaos.
So we're gonna discuss the difference between motion and progress. We're also gonna talk about why urgency without strategy can really lead to burnout. We don't want that. And also, you know how to hustle with power. Certainly not with panic. And I and I, I love this topic because, all right, let me give an example.
So. You think you're hustling, so you're burning the candle at both ends. You're stacking calls back to back, and oh, you're skipping lunch. Are you proud of that? You're answering emails? Oh, 1131, let me be the first to respond, but here's the truth. Hustle without direction is just a high functioning chaos and high functioning chaos does not win long term.
Anneliese Rhodes: Oh my God. I'm literally like, this is so me. I know you said it's so you. It is so me. In fact, like not that long ago, I was singing my own praises to my husband. Like, oh my gosh, I can do this, I can do that. I feel like we talked about multitasking. I feel like this is like right along with it. And, you know, you're, you're proud of yourself.
Yeah. I skipped lunch. Ooh. I fasted, I intermediate fasted for whatever you, you know, call that fasting for like intermittent, not intermediate, intermittent fasting for like 18 hours, but it's like, really? Yeah. I could never do that. Did you really mean to do that, or, or was it just like you were spinning your wheels totally forgot to eat and then it's like six o'clock at night and you're like, oh my gosh, I'm starving.
Um, I'm so, I'm so guilty of this. You guys and Cindy, you're right. It, it's really. It can be pretty detrimental if you're not careful. Um, and what I mean by that is like you are apt to make mistakes when you are running in this chaotic, you know, Ooh, I gotta do this, I gotta do that. I've got five, 10 million different plates spinning all at once, and I'm, I'm doing this, I'm doing that, and I'm hustling.
Hustling. And. Then you realize that maybe you sent an email to the wrong person. Maybe you realize that you, um, kind of, you know, overreacted to something when you probably should have pulled back a little bit just because you're so tired, like physically and mentally exhausted. I. Um, you're not taking the breaks that you need to take.
You're not being strategic in your sales calls. I mean, these, this list can go on and on, but I think that we have hyped up hustle so much in today's culture, and I'm really glad that we're talking about this because it can totally kill a sales call. It can kill a, kill a sales strategy if
Cynthia Ficara: you're not
Anneliese Rhodes: careful.
Cynthia Ficara: So it's, it's kind of like an illusion of hustle, you know, because hustle is like a proud word and you know, if you're in medical device, there is a high demand for you. And it is something that does require showing up every day a sense of urgency in the right way. And I think that, I wanna clarify when we talk about an illusion of hustle, is that, you know, a high achiever.
A high performer that we speak to all the time when you're listening to us is that we often glorify busy. And then we think busy equals effective. And that's something we want you to understand is not true. You know? Um, I think we've all been guilty of that. You know? I love your, I I love when you just talked about like intermittent fasting, something I couldn't do, but so I like to eat too much.
So the other thing is like, I think about work, okay. And. I think about a time where, you know, it's fourth quarter your hu, you know, you're really in content for President's Club and so everything gives you a sense of urgency, but it also brings on panic and you think you have to do everything at once. I need you all to listen to me here to understand.
Now that is not gonna give you the results that you really need. So I, I think about this. Ask yourself, are you really sprinting towards your goal? Because sometimes that just might make you stand still. So more hustle does not open more doors, more clinical time, and more sales. It might just bring you on more stress.
So I think before we go on further, I think we've kind of done a pretty good job of, hopefully we've painted a picture of an illusion of hustle. So Lisa, yeah. Can you reveal our secret today behind controlling this chaos and what, how do we really redefine a hustle culture?
The Strategic Hustle That Wins the Race
Anneliese Rhodes: Sure. And it's funny you just said controlled chaos because you know that's always like my desk, right?
It's like a total mess and I can't find anything. But I really like our secret today because we just changed one word. So instead of it being chaos, the secret is controlled urgency. And so, you know, what do we mean by that? Because urgency. Like, for example, when a case is urgent, right? Like you have to get it done, the patient's, um, not doing well, they're not crashing and burning, but they're not like.
Doing great. We're an elective case, right? So urgency means you need, you need to have some motion behind it. You need to have some oomph behind it. But yet, in this controlled scenario, you still are being very strategic. You're still being very thoughtful. You're not just spinning a bunch of plates and seeing which one's gonna spin the longest.
You actually already know what you're gonna be doing. So that's really that controlled urgency that behind it all is still a calmness to some degree, so that you're able to really think about things, um, because it can be powerful, right? I mean, urgency can be powerful, but it has to be controlled. I.
Cynthia Ficara: I think this takes a piece of discipline and if you think back to some of the episodes that we've talked before about, about being strategic and being very tactical and it, if you combine that, you think about this, so the analogy I just said, it's fourth quarter, you're, you're, you know, rushing for President's Club will.
Pull out your information. Look at your planner, look at your goals, look at your strategies, and then really think, okay, controlled urgency. You know, what is my main goal? We talk about like your North Star. Why are you doing this? What is the reason? And then the actions behind what you're doing. Are they aligned with this goal?
Are they getting where you need to be or are you getting wrapped up in I need to stay busy. Now you have distractions. So it's actually taking you away from that North Star because going really, really fast sometimes just brings on frantic movement. Yeah. If you could see Lisa right now, she's doing frantic t.
Love it.
Anneliese Rhodes: I have a great analogy. Oh, I have a great analogy. Just hit me. Go. It just hit me. So, um, you know, a few weeks ago the Triple Crown was. Um, or like a month ago. I don't know. Now. It's been a while, but you know me, I love horses and I love horse racing. And so to the uneducated eye, and I actually learned this, um, from my stepmom.
So to the uneducated eye, a race horse looks like it's just all out, like going all out. Every single horse is like go, go, go, go, go all energy for one goal, which is to cross the finish line, right? To cross that line, to win the race. But the truth is there's actually some control in there. So I don't know if you've ever noticed this, Cindy, but jockeys the guys that, no, the little guys that ride the horses and women, they actually, their position changes as the race continues.
So depending on which race it is, one's a little shorter, one's a little longer, but the jockeys basically stark in a very standing up position. To where they are holding back, even though to the naked eye, you'd never know this, they're actually holding back the horse to some degree. Now they're probably still going about 80 to 85% of their full energy.
But remember these, these jockeys have ridden these horses, you know, now for months and months and months and not quite years because you have to be 2-year-old to race. But, um hmm. Or 3-year-old, but, um, they know the horse inside and out so they know what kind of energy the horse has. Just like your business, right?
You know what, what each part of your business is gonna take. So they stand up in the saddle and they're holding back on the horse's reign and about three-fourths of the way into the race, or maybe a little bit less than that, they start to sit back. And when they sit back, they give the horse the reins even more.
And that's when the horse. Really goes. So they're holding back, holding back until right when they know their time. That's why you see these horses come from behind. Sometimes you see a horse that's dead last and then all of a sudden he wins the race and, and everybody's like, oh my gosh, that was amazing.
But no. There's actually strategy behind it. The jockey actually knew the whole time what the horse was capable of doing, and he just held him back until the right moment, and then they went for the finish line. So I'm thinking about what you were talking about with, you know, just go, go, go. You've got all your, you know, you're just thinking about the the end goal.
But you still have to be strategic in the way that you approach the end goal. So anyhow, that was my analogy for the day.
Cynthia Ficara: Okay. That was such a great analogy of controlled urgency, because I'm literally visualizing how the jockey, you know, kind of contains that urgency until it's the right moment. And in our business, that's what this is about.
Not every moment is the right moment in a horse race. Maybe it's only in the last. 40 yards. Yeah. And when you look at your business plan and you, and you're strategizing, you're deciding when you push forth the effort, at what time in your business, at what week, at what point with each customer as you're going through the sales cycle, do you push that little bit of urgency?
So maybe that controlled urgency is about, this is we, we plant the seeds, we build our. Relationship, our trust. And then what point do you just push that little bit of urgent hustle to, to make an impact? Oh my gosh, Lisa, I love this. This is, this is even more revealing than I thought. So controlled urgency.
Wow Now, now I'm like thinking about my business in a different way, and I cannot wait. Yeah, of course now the racing is over, but I can't wait to watch a horse race, and I'm gonna literally look at a jockey and see when he sits up straight and when he doesn't. Yeah, it's cool. It's very small, but yeah.
That was one of the best examples. So, okay. So we, we took a minute to kind of talk about the illusion of hustle. Mm-hmm. Lisa did an amazing job laying out a great vis visualization of controlled urgency. So I think the last part that we want to really discuss today is how you can really not burnout. You know, we want you to burn bright.
We don't want you to burn out. So. Let's think about this. How do you come up with habits, routines to avoid burnout? Now, this could be episodes within itself, but I think just to reiterate what we just said, it starts with knowing what's important, where you strategize and plan. So I think one word that sticks out to me is prioritization.
Yeah. So when we're talking about a controlled urgency and not burning out, I think number one is almost a ruthless. PRI prioritization. It takes discipline. Really Ask yourself, is this important? Is this driving the needle?
The Power of White Space
Anneliese Rhodes: Yeah. Yeah. And that goes back to, you know, your, your top five things that you write down for the quarter.
That you, the, the doctors that you're going to prioritize, the accounts that you're gonna prioritize, what are those goals within each of those bullet points? Right? Dr. Smith, I need to get a lunch with him. I need to get a, you know, that'll lead to a case I need to talk to him about this product and this product and this product.
So we've talked about this over and over again in different episodes, but being very smart in your strategic planning, having a goal within a goal, a purpose within a purpose, um, and really focusing on that, you know, and not just against. Spinning your wheels. Um, you know, I was thinking about something and so like, okay, so let's just take this for example, you're in the hospital, you see your physician, you've got your little note card of the things you need to get accomplished with him or her.
You've done that, let's. Maybe push in a little bit of hustle for the next 15, 20 minutes. And what does that look like? That literally could look like you just going to the OR board and seeing what's on the schedule for the day. Mm-hmm. And being like, oh, Dr. Smith has, you know, a total knee and a total hip.
Oh, and it lists the company, oh, he must be using this new device. So then in the back of your mind you're going, okay, well I also need to talk to him about X, Y, Z. So you're kind of filtering in a little bit of hustle 'cause you're doing the extra work by running and it's not really extra work 'cause you're already there.
But take the five steps, go look at the OR board, and then maybe you'll see a new doctor's name up there, somebody that you didn't even know existed, and you're like, oh, who's this guy? And then you ask the OR supervisor, Hey Dr. Jones, you know, where did she come from? All of a sudden you get some new information and that kind of adds to your strategic hustle or your controlled urgency just by infiltrating just an easy 15 minutes and then that's it.
That's great. Now you go back to your planning board and you say, okay, so the next time I'm here, here are the things I need to do.
Cynthia Ficara: I love when we talked before about when you really picture your territory. As a company and you are the boss of your own business, that makes your planning focus differently and, and I think I challenge you guys to think about that today because I think this can kind of help with your.
Your way to control not getting burnt out. So let's think about this. We all are guilty of that, um, short-term pain for long-term gain. And we are gonna have moments of push. We are gonna have moments that require more exertion that leads us to, to getting tired or burnout. So how do we reset? You know, what can we do to make it better?
And so, yes, we've already said plan with purpose, not panic, but now what do we do when. We fall off the wagon a little bit. Okay. So let's just take care of ourselves. Um, you know, the term white space, I think that's something that I'm very guilty of not providing myself, but it's where you just have time of nothing.
How do you, this very difficult time, what does that look like? I have no idea. Deal with that. Oh my gosh. Right? How does your brain just. Have nothing. I don't know what that means, what that means. Men are so good at this. Like, can we just borrow a piece of a man's brain for some white space today? Because that's so true.
What are you thinking about? Nothing. Are sure. Mine's like a type I I feel like it's a typewriter and things are just flying all the time. Yes. Oh my. Things are just like, try to go to sleep and calm down. But so sometimes for me it's. Um, well, it used to be really long runs, but taking a run, taking a walk, swimming, maybe you're into music, maybe you're into birdwatching, whatever it is that just takes you away from the immediate, um, hustle of work.
And sometimes it's like, schedule a lunch with a friend for 15 minutes and talk about memories from college or something. It just. Take yourself away from the present moment. It can really do you good. And if you have time on your schedule, go book a massage. Go get a facial, go do something for yourself.
It makes all that burnout better to reset because I guarantee when you come back to strategize, you're that much fresher, that much more focused and, and you can do it. So you know, you're not, your body is physically not meant to have an endless hustle. So. It is programmed to hustle, inte, and I mean, is that a word intelligently is what I meant to say.
So you have urgency, intention, and control.
From Spinning Wheels to Smart Hustle
Anneliese Rhodes: Oh, I love that. But by the way, can I just say even if I am getting a massage, my brain is still going. I would love, that's a problem. I would love to learn how to literally have that white space. I don't know how you do that. That is definitely something that I can, Lisa,
Cynthia Ficara: we need somebody on the podcast to teach both of us how to turn off our minds.
I even tried with music or picture waves and then I'm like, oh, now I wanna be at the beach. Oh, we can't do it at the beach. It's like, squirrel, squirrel. It's terrible. Terrible.
Anneliese Rhodes: God, if anybody's listening, you know, somebody help us learn how to turn on. I hope you're laughing with us by the way. I really do.
I don't wanna be out here all alone. Just crazy. Um, alright, so hopefully today, you know, I really am glad we talked about this whole. Hustle culture. I feel like it gets this glamorous, you know, oh, I'm so busy. I, I have so many things on my plate, and I'm super guilty of thinking like that. But I've also realized the older that I get, that it's not actually as glamorous as it looks, and it's not as productive as it looks either.
And sometimes when you're just hustling, hustling, you're actually not going anywhere. You're just spinning your wheels and you're, you're not moving. So I hope that we talked about, you know, kind of the difference between that like. Motion and actual progress and, and becoming really smart and strategic in your planning and why.
You know, the, the. Controlled Chaos isn't the word you're looking for. It's controlled urgency because there's nothing wrong with having urgency in your business, but make it controlled, make it smart, make it to where it makes sense, right? Versus just kind of, again, spinning your wheels and doing it from a place of power like we talked about a couple episodes ago.
Don't come from a place of panic. Come from a place of power. Be smart. I. Be a boss. This is your territory, your company run it like one.
Cynthia Ficara: So if you've listened to this episode and you're thinking to yourself right now, you're driving in the car and you're like, I just feel like I'm drowning, then I want you to just take a moment and think about how we change this madness and drowning into a better momentum.
So the call to action for today would be, I'd like you to pull up your calendar, and I want you to eliminate the exhaustion, and I want you to put in intention. So send us your messages. Let us know if this helped. We are wishing you a fabulous week with controlled urgency of our newly defined hustle culture and bringing you on more success as high performers in medical device.
Thanks for listening.
