The myth of hard work
By Project Success
We all, at least one time in our life, felt the “injustice” of unsatisfying results of hard work invested. At the same time, a different individual in what seemingly much less work achieve much more. I know this feeling, and I can confirm it is really frustrating. So the following paradox appears: why doesn't hard work always generate satisfying results? Well it depends one how one defines "Hard Work"!
It is worth noting that in the reality, we can all confirm it is a myth. However, it doesn’t mean hard work is not valuable. It only means, that hard work by itself wouldn’t guarantee the sought result. In order to debunk a myth, we should always reconsider our assumptions behind it. In this case it is the correlation between “hard work” and results. For some people “working hard” is quite effective, at the same time, some people continue achieving only mediocre results with hard work, and some don’t seem at all to work but still achieve what their heart desires.
So, what is the explanation for all that? As we all know: "we should always work hard in order to achieve anything in life", at least that is what we learnt in school. Logic says, it all revolves around our definition for "hard work". At first look, the answer might be clear, but if we consider it thoroughly, we should reach the conclusion that “hard work” can only be defined in subjective terms. I.e, for every individual the definition is different. Since
By redefining hard work using it components, we should reach the conclusion that hard work depends mostly on our invested time and our intensity or tempo. This might explain, our objective findings of the “exceptional individuals” who don’t seem to perform any work at all, but achieve the results. As great as this explanation is, something is still missing. Quite often we can observe two similar individuals doing the same work, investing the same time, and both working in a high tempo and intensity. Yet their results do differ. Well, we missed two essential components: intelligence and efficiency. Since intelligence is quite a broad subject related to talent and ability in specific fields, we will concentrate on the second, for more information regarding intelligence, you are more than welcome to check out our guides serie: “The Intelligence Guide”. For now, let’s stick with the efficiency term. Compared to “hard work”, efficiency is quite simply to define; efficiency is the measure of production from a given limited resource. In our case, the resource is time, and the production is the level of results which we achieve. Hence for a given invested time resource, our efficiency will be the productivity to reach a level of results.
So how do we improve efficiency, with regard to the talent of some people to be naturally efficient (I am proud to consider myself one of them), the required traits are discipline and planning. I.e, we should be disciplined when using our time and follow the plan. In my opinion, the solution should be a time management system. The goal is to recognize in every single moment the current tasks at hand. Why is that important? The answer is concentration. Without a plan, we tend to deviate from single task, and jump between several unrelated issues. And you know what? We are not built for that, and thus with this tendency, in our complicated technological and social world, we get lost and not realize our potential for greatness. The time management system will do the exact same thing. The time management system should define the required tasks and allocate reasonable time for every task. In order to find the optimal time for every assignment, the best method is trial an error. We might test multiple time allocations possibilities, and with experience, we can remodify the system until we reach the ultimate time plan. For final discussion and implementation, we would like to offer you our guide "Time Management 101".
In conclusion, in order to resolve the hard work myth, one should consider the definition of hard work, the systematical approach of the time management and the intelligence, which can both be developed and improved with appropriate training.
