When you’re reading about tips on how to achieve something, it’s only natural to want that advice to come from a reliable source. And today’s strategies for building a hustle mentality come from a very reliable one; his name is Dimitrious and he’s a serial entrepreneur with years of experience, as well as an extremely inspiring story!

So let’s learn all about him, then learn how to adopt the same attitude as him when it comes to business. Trust me, if you take his advice to heart, you’ll see the benefits in your career.

the life story of Dimitrios Tsioutsiopoulos

Dimitrious is the son of a first generation immigrant to the US from Greece. His father didn’t even know how to speak English, and they started their lives in the US with nothing. In fact, Dimitrious never even had a high school education.

But even still, he watched his father build a successful restaurant and find a way to support himself and his family with nothing to start with. And it was then that Dimitrious decided if his father could build that success from nothing, that he himself could achieve greatness with the resources he had at his fingertips because of his dad.

With the inspiration he gained from his father, he decided to become a businessman. He didn’t know exactly where to start, or what to study to make that dream come true but he persevered. And now he is a Harvard graduate student who is still studying finance for his masters, and he works in merchant banking while doing private equity.

Dimitrious is someone with a true hustle mentality; he even recalled a time where he washed people’s windows as an undergrad because he was doing what it took to pay the rent. And in fact, Dimitrious enjoys being faced with obstacles like that. According to him, his life would be too boring if there were no bumps in the road.

His Tips To Develop A Hustle Mentality and Find Success 

Now that you know a bit more about Dimitrious, let’s explore some of the wisdom that he has to offer.

Manage your time

His answer is that the ideal time management system is going to look different for everyone. The key is to figure out what works for you based on your traits and personality. For instance, since he’s the type of person that thrives under pressure… he used to procrastinate a lot because the quickly approaching deadline gave him a necessary boost of motivation.

There is one thing that he thinks everyone needs to do in order to structure their day though, and that is to make it as structured as possible. His day is so structured that he essentially does the same thing every day, and doesn’t deviate often from his routine. Minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day; he structures everything.

And the key to making this work, he says, is to stay accountable. Find someone that you trust, and give them the task of making sure you stay on track.

But if you’re not sure how to manage this, here are some more detailed tips to achieve a structured day and find accountability.

structure Your Day & be Accountable

Structuring your day doesn’t always have to mean that you know exactly what you’ll be doing in every given moment. Because if we’re being honest, there are too many variables in life to be able to successfully schedule your time in this way. 

But Dimitrious says that you can still block out sections of time that you’ll use for “something”. There doesn’t need to be super specific labels, but there needs to be structure.

In general though, Dimitrious believes that about 80% of your day should be spent working and doing something productive. Advancing your career, doing your daily work tasks, networking, etc.

The next 10% should be composed of activities that let you better yourself; learning something new, practicing a skill, etc.

And the final 10% should be for a leisurely activity, so in other words, just do something you enjoy during that time without worrying about anything else.

And the second part of scheduling your day is accountability. He says that accountability is essentially keeping a promise to yourself; which should be all the motivation you need to stay on track since at the end of the day, you’re the most important person in your life! But of course, you can also enlist the help of others in order to keep yourself on track if necessary.

Know Yourself

Just now, I mentioned that “you’re the most important person in your life”. This is a somewhat difficult thing to realize, but it’s true. We’re all individuals, doing their best; and we can only really count on ourselves. Which is why it’s so important to truly know ourselves, if we’re going stay accountable.

For instance, you need to know how much you can handle. If you try to overload yourself with too many tasks to complete every day, then no matter how motivated you are, you will burn out. Which is a big reason why when we make resolutions like “tomorrow I’m going to change my life”, which is way too large of a goal to take on at once, we’ll only be able to keep up the pace for a day or two before we fizzle out.

That’s not to say that you shouldn’t set deadlines and goals for yourself, you absolutely should. Specifically, Dimitrious believes in deadlines, he thinks that you should set deadlines for yourself in almost everything you do. But you just need to realize that you don’t have to be the most productive person on the planet in order to be successful, be self aware enough to know what your deadlines and goals should really be.

While we’re on the topic of knowing yourself and you habits though, he says that it’s important to really keep an eye on how busy you truly are. Because if you don’t know yourself well, then it’s easy to think that you’re getting a lot done when you’re really not. Dimitrious himself fell into this trap last February, he felt that he was completing a lot of tasks but then realized that he actually wasn’t.

If you want to combat this, then the best thing to do is write down what you’ve done in the day… hour by hour. This will quickly show you if you’re wasting more time than you might think are. Plus it will help you feel more accountable during the day, if you know you’re going to be reflecting back in detail afterwards.

Questions To Ask Yourself In Order To Get To Know Yourself Better –

Dimitrious says that are some questions you can ask yourself in order to know yourself better, and even to “level up” in some ways.

• What are my opinions? This question is all about understanding how you feel about various things, it’s quite a broad inquiry. But over time, you’ll learn your opinions about things naturally if you pay enough attention to yourself.
• What affects my motivation? This question works in two different ways; ideally it will allow you to identify things that motivate you, but also things that don’t motivate you or even have a negative impact on your motivation.
• What words are good for me? This question is prompting you to figure out how words can affect your mindset; which ones elicit positive emotions rather than negative ones.
• When do I feel most alive? This question may be the most important one to ask yourself in order to figure out what makes you tick. The answer will be as unique as you, but make sure you explore this one.

But Wait… What To Do When You Don’t Have Any Extra Time Even After All Of This –

You may be asking yourself though, what if even after I’ve learned to manage my time, I still don’t have enough of it to take on a new project? Well, Dimitrious says that in most cases we really do have the time. It’s just another case of thinking you’re busier than you are. Or a case of overestimating how much time we have to spend on the new project.

This is why he often uses the “fifteen minute rule”. The fifteen minute rule is exactly what it sounds like, find just an extra fifteen minutes somewhere in your day; wake up a bit earlier or go to bed a bit later. And with that fifteen minutes that you’ve freed up in every day, use it to work on or learn whatever it is you’re wanting to. Because even that small amount of time can really add up over time. Don’t underestimate it.

Another strategy to complete more tasks if you’re running low on time is to substitute and pair activities. For example… let’s say that you want to read more but don’t have the time. You could substitute an unimportant activity for some reading time. If you list to music while you drive, workout, etc; then you could listen to an audiobook during those times instead.

In that examples you substituted the music for an audiobook; and you paired the audiobook with an activity you already do. There are many different ways to substitute and pair activities, so find a way to apply this strategy  during your day!

The Importance Of Taking Breaks –

If you succeed in structuring your day and maxing out your productivity, don’t forget to reward yourself. Burn out is a very real issue, and it shouldn’t be taken lightly. Dimitrious’ strategy to avoid burnout is to complete his structured routine for three weeks, no breaks and no exceptions. But then he gives himself a week off in order to reset, that way he can keep up his hustle lifestyle without fizzling out.

Goals and Discipline key points

Going right along with scheduling and accountability are the other two important aspects of having a hustle mentality; goals and discipline. They go hand in hand with each other, much like scheduling and accountability do. Without goals you can’t be disciplined; but with discipline, you can’t reach your goals.

First thing is first though, let’s look at how Dimitrious believes you should set goals…

Tips On Setting Goals –

Dimitrious sets his goals according to what he calls the “macro framework”. This framework is fairly simple to follow, and he says that it can change your life if you master it. The key to this strategy is to start off by making a defined goal, or a macro goal, which should be the biggest goal you have at this time in your life. Maybe it’s buying a home, etc.

After you set your defined goal, work backwards from it. So take your macro goal and break it down into smaller goals, but the trick here is, not to stop breaking it down until you reach micro goals that you can literally reach today. Break it down until you can’t break it down anymore. This allows you to start reaching your goals a lot faster, which will help a lot with your discipline.

Tips On Staying Disciplined –

Discipline in Dimitrious’ eyes is closely related to two things: self esteem and high energy. 

In terms of self esteem; he thinks that it and discipline are part of a cycle that goes all the way back to the accountability we were talking about earlier. In essence… he believes that by staying accountable you will build trust with yourself, that trust in yourself will turn into self esteem, and this will result in discipline because you’ll get done what you need to get done if you truly believe that you will.

And as far as the high energy part, he thinks that it directly correlates with discipline. High energy will lead to you being more disciplined, but the discipline will also fuel the energy. This has to do with the results that discipline will deliver; when you’re disciplined, you’re completing goals. And if you’re constantly achieving goals then you’re sure to gain energy from it, it’s impossible to not be motivated!

Basically, good habits will keep turning into more positive feelings and it will start an upward spiral; instead of the downward spiral you get if you focus or feed negative feelings feelings and actions.

How To Get Past Hurdles?… By Learning To Embrace Them

Dimitrious doesn’t see hurdles as inherently bad, in fact as I mentioned earlier, he even enjoys them. He says that hurdles become a negative thing when you only focus on the negative, a habit that he thinks is a defense mechanism. But if you resist the urge to look at things through a negative lens, you can actually start to look at your hurdles as breakthroughs.

This is one of the many ways that perspective can change a situation completely, and Dimitrious has taken full advantage of it. As he put it, every success story had a hurdle somewhere within it; but the person in the story eventually overcomes it and then everything goes on an upward spiral. So remember when you’re facing an obstacle, that it could be your big break in disguise!

Another way that Dimitrious gets past his hurdles is by remembering his “why”…

Why It’s Important To Have A “Why” –

Everyone tells you to have a why when you start a business, but having a “why” is important in every aspect of your life because it encourages you to keep going even when things become difficult; aka when there are hurdles.

Obviously the “why” will look different to everyone. You might want to make more money so you can afford a home, you may want to workout to get healthy, and you may want to learn a language so you can travel. Regardless of your “why”, you need to identify it and remember it always. That way when obstacles present themselves, you can use your “why” to get past them.

How To Deal With It When Hurdles Turn Into “Failures” –

It’s an unavoidable truth in life, especially when dealing with challenges… Sometimes we don’t overcome the hurdles in our lives in exactly the way we’d like to. Sometimes things go wrong with our businesses or lives. Sometimes we feel as though we’ve “failed”. But, according to Dimitrious, failure is really more of a mindset than a reality.

Instead of feeling down about it, look at it as opportunity to learn something. If you change your perspective on failure to a positive one, then you’ll maintain your motivation and see equally positive results from your mindset shift.

Final Thoughts From Dimitrious –

At the end of the day, you can choose to have a hustle mentality. It might be something that you have to work towards, but it’s something you can achieve if you really want it. But the biggest advice that he can give is to just start! If you want something, immediately start working for it. If you want a hustle mentality, start developing it. It’s really that simple.