The Myth of ‘Hard Work’

“She’s a hard worker. She puts in at least 60 hours a week and is getting nowhere.”

I overheard that phrase the other day and cringed. At some point, we decided to equate the amount of hours we put in with the term hard work. While working 60+ hours a week can certainly be hard, we shouldn’t readily associate that with putting in hard work.

It reminds me of a line from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams:

“So, the hours are good, are they?”

“Yeah. Though now you come to mention it, most of the actual minutes are pretty lousy.”

We count up our hours like war medals, but if we are honest, most of the minutes working aren’t fruitful. So what does real hard work look like?

HARD WORK looks like the tough, honest five minute conversations we avoid.

HARD WORK looks like sacrificing entertainment to spend 20 minutes on a personal project you’ve put off.

HARD WORK looks like those emails that take one minute to write about something we want to ask for, but are too afraid of rejection.

The most effective people I know focus all their time in the morning around HARD WORK while the rest of us are just pushing around busy work, filling our hours, avoiding the work that could be fruitful. 

If this sounds like you, here are a few resources I would suggest to help battle filling your minutes with busy work:

LINCH PIN by Seth Godin

Easily one of my favorite career books based on the idea of working effectively and becoming indispensable.

 THE FLINCH by Julien Smith

Easily one of my favorite books. Short and to the point – getting over the fear of failure; that ‘flinch’ that stops us from doing real, hard work.

THE 4 HOUR WORKWEEK by Tim Ferris

OTHER RESOURCES

Todd Henry has a great PODCAST on his daily tasks that keep him focused and productive.

I use a Moleskine Professional Notebook. It has places for daily goals, projects broken down and page indexing to keep it all straight.

I’m also releasing a book in late March that will focus on ways to tackle hard work. You can sign up HERE and I’ll let you know when it’s available.