Working Hard Vs Doing Hard Work - What No One Tells You
What's up gang?
There's this notion that success is tied with working 80 hours per week, having zero hobbies or interests outside of work and being obsessed with making money. It's all over the internet. The motivational posts, the hustle and grind mentality of aimlessely working. Wanna know a secret? In most companies no one really works more than 20 hours a week and even if they did, the output would be the same.
Stop Being A Busybody and Start Solving Problems
We all know this guy. He claims he works from 5 am to 8 pm, he sleeps for 4 hours and he listens to Tony Robinson on his way to work. Although he is an obedient, hard-working bee, he hasn't accomplished much. Why's that?
Well, for starters he doesn't really work 15 hours. He spends 1 hour back and forth from work, he'll talk to his work buddies for an hour or two and then he will watch funny youtube videos, while scrolling through facebook. In reality, the actual workload could be done in 4 hours, but he spreads it out by being unfocused.
He's also very low in energy because he doesn't get enough sleep and he's always anxious and antsy, because he doesn't have a healthy way of releasing the pressure.
What no one told you is that working hard isn't enough.
It's very easy to tell you that you just need to work more and more. It's very easy to be Gary Vaynerjadhakjh or whatever his name is and make 20 minute videos about "doing the work". What's not easy to do, is to tell you that it takes luck, timing, skill, talent, genetics etc.
There's a term I like very much: Sprezzatura. Doing things in a nonchalant way and still get results.
"Only in recent history has 'working hard' signaled pride rather than shame for lack of talent, finesse and, mostly, sprezzatura"
-Nassim Taleb
He's right. You see, everyone idolizes the grind, the romanticized American dream of putting your head down and doing the work. I get it. It's alluring. The idea that all it takes is to show up. But come on, look at reality!
If working hard is enough, then children at sweatshops would be millionaires.
Instead, do hard work. Do things that no one else is doing. Solve problems and provide value. Provide services people actually want to pay for. You wake up in the morning and you just start doing things all over the place. NO! Pick a priority problem and solve it. Once that's gone, move to the next one. Be efficient with your time for fuck's sake.
Humans are able to do do deep work for 4 hours max. After that, our performance drops significally.
"Does that mean I get to sit around all day doing nothing?"
No, my monkey-like friend. It means that you should be focusing on getting shit done, rather than counting the hours spent working, capiche?
Also, you should be focusing on building skills. Skills that are relevant to your work of course. If you are a musician, what good it does to you learning design?
Look, obviously there'll be periods in your life where you'll HAVE to work long hours. You'll have to put in the hours and try new things, especially if you don't exactly know what you want to to in the future. You'll have to pay this life toll, sooner or later, but always remember: Sprezzatura.
-Thatredbeardguy
P.S- Did you like this post? Actually, I don't care what you think.
Social Compliance
Don't Lie To Yourself
Most People Are Dumb
This man knows da way.
I cannot tell you how many busy bodies i see working hardly.
Or maybe hardly working. I don't know which, but i usually end up cleaning up after them.
Just a little bit more expert system design work and it would be easier to just replace them. The just take paper in and put paper out. If we actually calculated all the jobs that actually produce something (throwing out all the paperwork) i am sure that only about 13% of the people on the planet work.
We are already overproducing and overconsuming, yet we are working even more hours. AI will deem most jobs obsolete anyway, so only the ones that matter will remain.
You know a great advice is working hard and doing something that you know will actually benefit you. It's kinda vague when people tell you work on skills to build a better you, I would argue don't work on skills that are of no value to you or will provide any sort of meaning then whatever is leftover work on that.
Usually people are like "oh there's too many skills to choose from because I want to work on all of them, to better myself".
Internet has that effect unfortunately. Especially younger people who are just starting out and want to make money online, have their heads spinnig. Facebook ads, dropshipping, AM, FBA etc. Instead they should be focusing of cultivating broad skills.
Sells.
Marketing.
Ads.
Writing a structured post for fuck's sake.
Instead they buy a $99 course about designing a sick website, that no one will EVER visit.
I wouldn't blame the internet, it's a place of opportunities if you know where to look. Younger people usually don't know where they want to go in life, because they don't want to be stuck doing a job they're going to hate for the rest of their lives.
My motto would be just go with flow, nowadays you can make money or career out of anything really.
True. Internet can free you and enslave you, like everything else for that matter.
Totally agree. It's like "busy work" vs actually being productive and moving forward.
I actually wanted to add that. People are scared to move forward and rather go in circles. Fear of change. Uncertainty.
I very much believe what you said about the amount of work to be done versus the time some people take to do it. It probably has something to do with an hourly salary, too, versus being paid on contract, or being a business owner.
I've always preferred having the time to do what I want, so when I had my own business, I managed to get done in 12 hours what I had been paying someone else 24 to do. However, before that, when I was an employee, that time to do things got spread out throughout the day, with the breaks and the socializing you describe so I could get paid my full days wages.
Now, I'm here, looking for ways to maximize my time and efficiency, so I can spend time doing something else.
Yeah, exactly. Efficiency is the key here, as time is our only real currency.
Funny thing, as you say and I agree that time is our only true currency, there's a physicist trying to prove that time doesn't truly exist, at least not how we perceive it. Pretty fascinating stuff, if it's true. Still an interesting theory even if it's not.
Any source?
I appreciate the effort to expand the limits of our consciousness, but I've found theories like this are often based on pedantic classifications of matter and/or general relativity.
Yep. Here you go. Carlo Rovelli.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-04558-7
It sounds interesting, but unless he truly redefines some concepts, I just can't see how his hypothesis is true.
Thanks for sharing though, I always dig this kind of stuff!