The push towards tremendous achievements – the determination we see in visionaries ranging from Steve Jobs to your everyday start-up founder who quits her day job to pursue a dream – is what drives bold entrepreneurial pursuits. Such journeys, I have found, require incredible amounts of sheer energy, focus, and time. 
 
Having recently concluded four years of interviews for a book on the topic of making ideas happen, I can say one thing for sure: Hard work is the single greatest competitive advantage. Ideas don’t happen because they are great. The genius is in the execution, aka the “99% perspiration” that has become this site’s namesake. 
 
Perspiration implies sweat, self-discipline, and (yes) occasional exhaustion. I think this is what Malcolm Gladwell teaches us in his book Outliers when he proposes that a true mastery of anything requires 10,000 hours of doing it. There are no shortcuts to lasting successHard work is always the baseline of great achievements. And I don’t think these successful entrepreneurs-turned-naysayers have defied the odds through casual effort.They have either chosen not to share this part of their past or have forgotten the drive that started it all. Perhaps their new take on work is akin to an adult’s take on grades or playground politics in elementary school – in retrospect, you wonder why you stressed so much.
 
One lesson here is to question the nuggets of wisdom we take away from success stories. Retrospective insight is a dangerous thing: it can taint advice. Hindsight becomes biased based on the luxuries one enjoys from his or her hard work – four-day weeks among them. Needless to say, once a ball is rolling, it’s easier to keep it going. 
 
That said, a contrarian perspective is always valuable when it makes us rethink the status quo of normal working hours, meetings, and traditions of the daily grind that we’re all liable to fall into without measuring the outcome and remembering our intentions. 
 
I agree that lots of energy is misappropriated. And I agree that we must preserve the sanctity of our minds, creative stimulation, and always strive for balance. But I think it is dangerous to gloss over the merits of tried-and-true persistence. The importance of hard work is a timeless truth. Rather than fight it, let’s roll up our sleeves and run with it.