The Myth of Hard Work
“Hard Work” does not mean what you think
In popular culture, specifically in the USA where I live, there is this underlying belief that if you want to be great or achieve spectacular results, you need to have a face melting work ethic at all hours of the day. I’m here to tell you that is not the case — you can still be at the top of your field and live out your dreams without working your entire life away.
First, I need to clarify that I am in no way implying that you can be lazy and not work towards anything and somehow achieve stellar results. That is not my objective here. I would like to give you an alternative perspective as to what work is, and how you should value quality over quantity.
When I think of work, what comes to mind is an action or series of actions that get you closer to some end result. As an aside, this is why I believe a large number of people are unhappy at their current job — there is no clear end result. Work should be thought of on a micro and macro level, with the micro being your day to day objectives and the macro being anything longer than a few weeks or months.
So lets take a closer look at how you can apply this concept of working to achieve specific objectives on a micro and a macro level.
At a micro level, to be as efficient as possible you want to make one of your days be as productive as five of the average person’s days. There are a few simple things you can do consistently over time that will achieve this.
In the morning before your day gets going, have a daily planner that allows you to be intentional with how you are going to spend your time throughout the day, and what you are looking to accomplish. You must refuse to contribute to the “quiet quitting” trend where you just show up and do the absolute bare minimum to avoid losing your job.
Each of your days should consist of specific tasks designed to make you better mentally, spiritually, and physically with breaks in between. The key is to not work for 12 hours straight, but to have a few hours of dedicated, focused, intentional work that moves you to a greater purpose and defined objective.
By doing this, you allow yourself to still enjoy your days by scheduling breaks between activities, but you also reinforce to yourself that you are going to stick to the plan and do the activities that will make you a better human. Will every day feel great and come with tons of drive and motivation? Absolutely not. However, by regularly doing the tasks you committed to on a daily basis you build a tolerance for the days where you don’t “feel it”. Additionally, once you get everything done that you wrote down you are free to spend the rest of your day as you please.
The objective of completing daily tasks is not to make monumental life changing occurrences every day, but to instead over time create a substantially better and more successful life for yourself.
On a macro level, you must realize that by consistently completing your daily actions and reinforcing good behaviors, you are building something better that will come to pass. Focus on getting 1% better everyday, nothing more nothing less. After a year of doing this in an area of a particular skill you will be about 38 times better more efficient at that skill. Now, imagine how that adds up over a decade.
Again, I need to reinforce to you that this all starts with your day to day habits and intentions. Don’t be satisfied with floating by — set daily goals for yourself to cause improvement and afterwards enjoy your life. Years from now you can fully reap the benefits of your incremental gains in a major way.
Another thing I would like to make clear is that you do not have to be perfect, it is ok to take some days off and sometimes not accomplish all of your daily goals. After all, you are human and we are flawed creatures. But don’t get too comfortable or complacent, because it will become a habit just as accomplishing daily goals can become a habit.
I’d like to say that these are all my beliefs and ideas so that I can take some of the credit. However, this comes from over a decade of closely studying those at the top of their field and looking for common themes. Additionally, it comes from studying others who also studied high performers and sought out common themes.
So if you take nothing else away from this, just remember that your daily actions determine the rest of your life. Do your best to build up the discipline needed to accomplish daily goals, and once done enjoy yourself and do whatever you want with your life.
After all, we only get one chance to live, so amongst the work we may as well enjoy ourselves as much as possible.
