When it comes to living a successful life, one of the most common and very first thought most people have is that they need to be extremely hard working. The truth is that hard work alone is not enough.
There is no point to work hard on something that only gives you little results. You can spend your entire life working hard on something but have nothing to show for at the end of the day.
Now, the reason I’m writing this is NOT to tell you NOT to work hard, but rather, I’m writing this post to share with you why hard work is insufficient if you want to produce outstanding success in your life.
And more importantly, I love to share with you the idea that if you are working hard right now and are not seeing much result and you have been doing this for some time, perhaps, you should spend some time thinking about your work.
Are the efforts that you have poured giving you the most result?
When Great Efforts Combine with the Wrong Strategy
While I’m not denying that hard work is important, but it is only important when you are pouring your hard work at the right thing.
For instance, if you have been jogging and running for years, does that mean you are a good marathoner and you are able to compete at the Olympic level? No, but why is that?
You can work hard and run a marathon three times a week for the next ten years, but that does not make you an Olympian. Why?
The reason is that hard work alone is not enough. You need to follow a blueprint or the right strategy to get you where you want to go.
My friend, if you keep running to the West, there is no way you catch up to see the sunrise; no matter how fast or how hard you run.
We were conditioned to work hard at whatever job we get and believe that things will work out. This is false and working hard at the wrong thing does not produce much for you.
Just by working hard itself will exhaust you and shorten your lifespan. Ronald Reagan has a famous quote:
“It’s true hard work never killed anybody, but, I figure, why take the chance?”
Look at the picture above this article; a guy pushing the big boulder. As you can see, no matter how hard you try, there is no way you can move the boulder, unless you have a lever.
If you want to earn a million dollar a year, by merely working and earning $5,000 a month will not make you reach your target. You need to do something else. Something extra.
By saying that you need to do something extra, I’m not referring to working harder or pouring more time. Even if you are hardworking and you work additional 5 hours a day, your boss double your salary to $10,000 a month, there is still no way you can reach the million dollar mark.
Unless you leverage on a system, you can never hit your goal no matter how hard you work.
This is why you need to learn how to leverage other financial vehicles such as real estate, compound interest, business, etc.
How Do You Define Hard Work?
The problem with working hard the majority has the wrong meaning of it. For most people, they thought that working long hours equal hard work. Which I believe, is only partially true.
If you are working as a hard labor in the construction and work under the hot sun, and then yes, you are working hard.
However, if your work is all about sitting in a comfortable chair and typing and reading from websites to websites, I guess, that is not really hard work, right?
It all depends on how you want to define it. To me, hard working comes in two parts.
The first part is what most of us already knew, which is to work hard on a goal diligently. And the second part is where most people miss out. The second part is about improving your strategy and making sure that you are getting the right results that you want.
“Hard work”, the first word “Hard” is what we commonly knew as working longer hours and putting in more effort. The second word, “Work”, is all about something that WORKS.
Yes, you need to be hard working and work on something that works.
If you are at work right now, just take a few minutes to ponder about the investment of time and energy you are making. Are your energy and effort well spent? Are you doing something that will pay off handsomely or will all your effort go down the drain?
Things will become extremely obvious if you are working for a fixed salary job. You will never see much of the economic benefits from pouring your energy into your job. Yes, you can be promoted and received a pay raise, but you are sacrificing your life (time) with money.
Your boss may be grateful for all the hard work you have poured in, but it is impossible for him or her to give you a pay raise every month just because you are working more.
Therefore, it is so clear that there is more to success than just plain hard work.
Warren Buffett, the business magnate, one of the most successful investors in the world, a billionaire, and also the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway that owns GEICO, Dairy Queen, NetJets, and a portion of American Express, Coca-Cola, Wells Fargo, IBM, many airlines companies, etc., and also the seventh largest company in the S&P 500 Index by market capitalization, says this:
“If you don’t find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die.”
So if hard work itself is not enough, what is?
Deliberate Hard Work
If you are serious about achieving remarkable success and producing outstanding results in your life, you must do what I called, “Deliberate hard work”.
Your work must be purposeful. You need to have an intention of why you want to work on something and to learn how to produce the most results with the least effort.
That, my friend, is the secret to success.
Take a book author as an example. A book author is leveraging on a system where the author can put in the hard work, write a book, and publish it for once, but he or she can get paid for the work for years.
On the contrary, if you are holding a job and are working for someone else, it will be difficult for you to achieve this. This is because your income is directly reflected by the hours that you put in. Plus, there are only so many hours you can spend a day and there is no way your boss will pay you double even if you work twice the hours.
Thus, you need to have a system. A system where you can leverage to grow your income and reach the success you want.
Have you ever heard about popular and successful blogs like ProBlogger, Goins Writer, Zen Habits, Addicted2Success, Motivation Grid, and more?
In the first few years when these bloggers build their blogs, they started from the very bottom. They put in deliberate hard work to work on their blogs and to build a system that they can leverage.
Eventually, they succeeded. Today, these bloggers are considered the market leaders and the mover and shakers in their respective industry.
Their blogs work for them 24/7. The hundreds of contents they posted on their blogs are attracting traffic and leads from around the world. They created an automatic system like building an email list to grow passive income and to achieve financial freedom in their lives.
Now, I’m not saying that you must start a blog or build a business. All I wanted to share with you is for you to take some time to think about your hard work.
I believe that you do not want your hard work to go wasted. And I know that everyone loves the idea of being productive, where they are able to produce maximum results with minimal work.
Hence, always remember the word “hard work” consists of two words, “hard” and “work”.
There is no doubt that you need to work HARD, but this is only the first part of the equation. The second part is about the WORK. You must work on something that will work and something that will give you the result that you desire.
Hello Shawn, I’m really touched by your ideas. I do agree; hard work does not guarantee success. But if you are doing it rightly for the right reason(deliberate hard work) there is nothing to stop your success. Maybe you would love to read about this 5 reasons why you must work hard: http://africanparadiseworld.com/2017/12/20/why-you-should-work-hard/
Hello Anthony, of course, we must work hard. But don’t just work hard for the sake of working hard, eh. Work hard with a right plan, and for the right reason. Cheers.
Hi Shawn. In my experience, hard work guarantees you one thing: more hard work. I’ve found that working hard 40 hours a week for someone else doesn’t get you anywhere.