Working hard might get you an A in school, but no amount of hard work will compensate for a service that doesn’t help solve real customer problems.
The Fail-Safe Solopreneur, by Darren C. Joe. Page whatever (I’m reading it on the Kindle app).
I need to hear this. I relish the grind and kinda subtly like to flex on the Work Harder Mentality. This is true for my approach in business and personal/spiritual affairs.
Hard work is necessary but not sufficient for success.
Success does not have a single cause, whether it is hard work or something else. “I worked hard for 20 years and look at what happened.” Success has a swarm of causal elements, some visible and some not.
Yet hard work is a factor that is within my control. Other causal elements are not. Therefore, channeling my inner Stoic I know that I must put in the effort. Max it out. I don’t mean maximum effort in terms of peak performance. I mean maximum effort in terms of optimal performance. What can be sustained over time? Do that.
There is another causal element within my control, and that is the mindset element. Again, channeling my Inner Stoic, ask what is in my control and what is not? That’s all I have to do. Well, I have to notice it and behave accordingly.
Working hard now (or not) pays dividends (or drills holes in the hull of your boat) later.
Yesterday at the gas station the guy in front of me was buying a Gatorade and $40 of lottery tickets. He simply could not do the mental math to compute how many tickets he would get at $2 per ticket, even though the gas station cashier kept telling him.
He skipped basic arithmetic in elementary school. I think it is also reasonable to assume that he did not take the effort to understand statistics and the improbable likelihood of a winning lottery ticket. His life would have been improved more with $40 of gas in his tank.
The compounding effects of being soft, of choosing the easier path, of lack of hard work as a young man put him where he is today. Lessons are everywhere. I learned one yesterday at the gas station.
That scares me into working harder today so I can reap the compounding rewards tomorrow. Podcasts and audio books while I’m running, not music. No TV, no social media, no movies. Stuff like that.
What is the compounding effect of reading Meditations 50 times? 100 times? Every time I read it there is something subtly different on the page. How did that happen?
Work harder. But don’t treat hard work as a single cause for any result. Do the footwork and let go of the results.
But work harder.
Let’s go. Stay on The Path.