Hard Work
Hard Work Defined
My definition of hard work is that which challenges you.
And why is challenge important? Why not just do what’s easiest?
Most people will do what’s easiest and avoid hard work — and that’s precisely why you should do the opposite. The superficial opportunities of life will be attacked by hordes of people seeking what’s easy. The much tougher challenges will usually see a lot less competition and a lot more opportunity.
There’s an African gold mine two miles deep. It cost tens of millions of dollars to construct, but it’s one of the most lucrative gold mines ever. These miners tackled a very challenging problem with a lot of hard work, but ultimately it’s paying off.
I remember when I was developing the PC game Dweep in 1999, I spent four months full-time working to create a design doc that was only five pages long. It was a logic puzzle game, and I found it extremely challenging to get the design just right. After the design was done, everything else took only two more months — programming, artwork, music, sound effects, writing the installer, and launching the game.
I spent all this time intentionally working on design because at the time, I believed this was where I could get the competitive edge I needed. I knew I couldn’t compete on the basis of the game’s technical attributes. Before I started on the game, I surveyed the competition and found a lot of games that I considered “low hanging fruit.” Most of the market was flooded with clones of older games, the kind of stuff that’s easiest to make. And most of my early games were short on design as well, mostly aim-and-shoot arcade games.
It was much, much harder to design an original game with unique gameplay. But it paid off handsomely. Dweep won the Shareware Industry Award in 2000, and an improved version of the game (Dweep Gold) won that same award the following year. As a result of the success of that game, I was interviewed by a reporter for the New York Times, and my interview along with a nice photo appeared in the June 13, 2001 edition (business section). First released on June 1, 1999, Dweep is now beginning its 7th year of sales. It can’t compete with today’s technology. It couldn’t compete on technology when it was first released. But it still competes well on design with the best of the other competitors in its field. I discovered there are a lot of players who prefer a well-designed game with dated graphics than a shallow light show with the latest technology. The long-term success of this game brought home the lesson that hard work does pay.
There’s no way Dweep would have been able to hold out this long if I had taken the easy way out during the design phase. I dug for gold two miles deep, so it was much harder for anyone else to unseat the game from its position in the market. In order to do that, they’d have to outdig me, and very few people are willing to do that because creative game design is excruciatingly difficult. Everyone says they have a cool game idea, but to actually turn it into something workable, fun, and innovative is very hard work. When I look at other games that are successful over a period of 5+ years, I consistently see a willingness to take on hard work that others aren’t willing to tackle. And yet today the market is even more overcrowded with cloned drivel than when I started.
Strong challenge is commonly connected with strong results. Sure you can get lucky every once in a while and find an easy path to success. But will you be able to maintain that success, or is it just a fluke? Will you be able to repeat it? Once other people learn how you did it, will you find yourself overloaded with competition?
When you discipline yourself to do what is hard, you gain access to a realm of results that are denied everyone else. The willingness to do what is difficult is like having a key to a special private treasure room.
The nice thing about hard work is that it’s universal. It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in — hard work can be used to achieve positive long-term results regardless of the specifics.
I’m using this same philosophy in building this personal development business. I do a lot of things that are hard. I try to address topics that other people don’t and bypass the low hanging fruit. I strive to explore topics deeply and search for the gold. I do lots of reading and research. I write lengthy articles and give my best ideas away for free, so I’m constantly forced to better my best. I launched this business in October of last year and have been working on it full time for essentially no pay.
Meanwhile I’m working hard in Toastmasters to build my speaking skills (my one-year anniversary was June 2nd). I belong to two different clubs and attend 6-7 meetings per month. I became a club officer about a month after joining, and I was just elected to a second officer position. I’ve given many speeches, all of them for free. I’ve competed in every speech contest since I’ve joined. If I had put all this time into my games business, I’d have a lot more money right now. It’s a lot of hard work, and I’ve probably got at least another year of training before I’m ready to go pro. But I’m willing to pay the price whatever it takes. I’m not going to take the easy path to a shallow position where I will only come crashing back down again. I won’t get up on a stage and spout a bunch of fluffy self-help sound bites that still garner applause and a paycheck but which don’t ultimately help anyone. If it takes years, it takes years.
I’m taking the same approach to writing my book. It’s a lot of hard work. But I want this to be the kind of book that people will still be reading 10 years from now. Writing a book like this is at least 10x harder than the kinds of books I see dominating the psychology section of bookstores today. But most of those books will be off the shelves in a year, and few people will even remember them.
Hard work pays off. When someone tells you otherwise, beware the sales pitch for something “fast and easy” that’s about to come next. The greater your capacity for hard work, the more rewards fall within your grasp. The deeper you can dig, the more treasure you can potentially find.
Being healthy is hard work. Finding and maintaining a successful relationship is hard work. Raising kids is hard work. Getting organized is hard work. Setting goals, making plans to achieve them, and staying on track is hard work. Even being happy is hard work (true happiness that comes from high self-esteem, not the fake kind that comes from denial and escapism).
Hard work goes hand-in-hand with acceptance. One of the things you must accept are those areas of your life that won’t succumb to anything less than hard work. Perhaps you’ve had no luck finding a fulfilling relationship. Maybe the only way it’s going to happen is if you accept you’re going to have to do what you’ve been avoiding. Perhaps you want to lose weight. Maybe it’s time to accept that the path to your goal requires disciplined diet and exercise (both hard work). Perhaps you want to increase your income. Maybe you should accept that the only way it will happen is with a lot of hard work.
Your life will reach a whole new level when you stop avoiding and fearing hard work and simply surrender to it. Make it your ally instead of your enemy. It’s a potent tool to have on your side.
I’ve met a fair number of successful, self-made people in my life. They all work in different industries, and came from different backgrounds and walks of life. The one thing they all have in common? They all work hard. And they all work a LOT.
In my opinion success has always been about doing work. The old ‘right place, right time’ is what jealous people say about successful people – I know this because I’m guilty of using this excuse in the past.
Yes, many successful people did catch an awesome ‘once in a life time’ break at one point in their lives, but when that opportunity came about, they were ready, because they were working, and once they said ‘yes’ to that opportunity, they worked even harder.
The same goes for the people I know who have built incredible bodies.
They used different workout routines and different diets, but each and every one of them were ‘nose-to-the-grindstone, get-it-done’ kind of people. Yes, some had great genetics to start, some used steroids, but all of them, ALL of them did work, And lots of it.
Despite what the latest ‘make money quick’, or ‘get jacked’ fads may promise, there is simply no substitute for hard work. And this is where I would like to draw the analogy between business success and building muscle. It is similar to the analogy between body fat and debt.
Basically, the same principles that create successful entrepreneurs also create people who are successful at changing their bodies.
The first Principle – Successful people do work.
Successful people work hard. Yes, we can argue quality over quantity, and doing the ‘right type’ of work, but all things being equal, more work is generally better than less. And yes, I know the trend right now in business and weight training is to talk about doing less work, but let’s face it – it takes a lot of hard work to get to the point where you can preach to people about doing less work.
The true visionaries, people like Elon Musk and Richard Branson – they are committed to consistently out-working their competitors. They do more work, more of the ‘right kind of work’ and more ‘quality work’. They do moreeverything. But they also try and do ‘less’ work. The trick is that they have a very unique way of doing ‘less work’ – I would say they redefine what ‘work’ means.
You have to make work fun, if you can do that it’s ceases to fell like work, it just becomes what you do, simply because you feel fulfilled and satisfied doing it. Most successful people don’t work for an hour then take 4 days off. They don’t work a little bit. They never stop working, because they enjoy it.
But, it’s not work to them in the classic sense since they are doing something they love, and they are careful to also enjoy life. As much as you may hate to hear it, the same goes for building a great body. It takes a commitment to doing work and a lot of it. You’ll always see marketing claims about the people who supposedly built great bodies on 20 minutes of exercise once a week, because quick results with minimal work will always be an attractive sales pitch. but as a general rule, great bodies take work. So to be able to consistently do a lot of work, it must be something you love doing.
Which brings me to the Second Principle – You must love what you do if you’re going to be successful
Stop looking at what other people are doing. Stop cheating off someone else’s paper and write your own paper.
If you’re going to commit to doing a lot of work, it has to be something you love. I have a friend who makes a living owning a fight-wear company, and another who makes a living as a trader. They’re both successful because they’re working hard at something they love to do. I doubt they’d have the same success if they switched jobs. The same principle works for building your body.
If you love lifting weights then lift weights. If you love Kettlebells then swing your bells. If you love Crossfit then do Crossfit, who cares what other people are doing, or what they think of what you are doing… Other people aren’t creating your success, you are.
It has to be enjoyable for you, if it’s a chore, you’re not going to do it, or at least you’re not going to do it as well as you could. So find the workout that is right for you right now, then work hard, push yourself and enjoy it.
Principle Three – Know how you are doing (Feedback and metrics)
What is your end goal? You need to know this. Is it to make money, or to have as many twitter followers as possible? If your goal is to make money, then you should measure your success by how much money you are making, if it’s something else, then measure success based on whatever it is you truly want, but to be successful you MUST HAVE SOME MEASURE OF SUCCESS.
The same goes for workouts. Is your goal to have a great body? If so then measure your workout success based on your measurements. If your goal is to be strong then measure your workouts based on how strong you are getting… but measure something, and most importantly make sure what you are measuring is a good indicator of whether or not you are moving towards your true goal.
Successful people do a lot of work, but they do it with direction. After all, if you don’t have direction then how do you know whether or not you are progressing? Work is only valuable if it comes with some sort of feedback.
You can sum up these three principles as “Do work, make sure you love what you do and don’t forget to measure your progress.” There are lots of other principles you could add to this statement, ideas like being a self-motivator, dreaming big and taking pride in your work, but for the most part, these all come after you commit to doing work.
