Hard Work is Always in Season
Seasons change. Our lives move and evolve as nature moves through its rhythmic progression and transition. Birth, growth, life, death. All embodiments of change. Few things carry through all seasons, most things have their peak moment. One thing that does transcend seasonal rotation is hard work.
Hard work is season-less. There is no perfect time of year to work hard. Society and those who follow conventional paths may have you think that you work hard certain times of the year, and vacation or celebrate in others.
There is nothing wrong with that, but there is also nothing wrong with going against the grain.
“The holidays” are actually a time where I put my nose to the grindstone, and commit to an arduous workload. It’s my choice, not saying it’s right or wrong. What I am saying is that hard work is always in season. It is never the wrong time to work hard.
Being overworked happens. Time for rest, fun and recovery are essential. Periods of respite to refocus and regain our health are vital to avoiding burn out. This comes down to pace, and also the type of work. How hard are we going to work and for how long? A sustained marathon pace of steady output for a long duration? Or a concentrated burst of energy, sprinting? Perhaps somewhere between, choosing when to push to our maximum and when to sustain a steady pace.
Does a marathoner work less hard than a sprinter? It’s different work. Does a creative director work less hard than a construction worker? It is also different work. Both require hard work to succeed. But, here is where good and outstanding differ. Plenty of marathoners, sprinters, creative directors, and construction workers show up to train or work, but don’t work hard. Or at least they don’t work hard consistently.
Hard work is not just showing up doing your job. Hard work is measured by the exertion and effort put forth. The focus and intensity brought to a task or project. Hard work is the extra things after everyone else leaves for the day, or when nobody is looking. The late night workouts, the early morning runs. Whatever it takes to not only fulfill the duty but to learn and improve — to become the best we are capable of.
Just because someone shows up, clocks in and completes 8 hours (or whatever duration) of work does not mean they worked hard. The vast majority of people think they work hard but don’t. At least not as consistently as they think. They are distracted, complaining, or unmotivated. And it is not always their fault. Depending on their frame of reference they may have seldom crossed paths with an individual with outstanding work ethic, so they have nothing to compare their own to.
Sometimes it takes getting out worked to motivate us to work hard again. Sometimes we need to see someone else truly putting in tremendous effort to question our own. And sometimes we realize we have been slacking.
I think the “work smarter not harder” movement lets people justify laziness. Work smarter and harder damn it! The two are not mutually exclusive. Put your best effort in, intelligently. Nobody who just works smart will ever go as far as someone who works hard and smart. The readiness to invest ourselves in our tasks, assignments or duties is hard work — and anybody who’s really working smart should be smart enough to know that their best work is done when they are fully engaged and care about it.
When discussing the work we do it is important to understand some distinctions. Hard work is not synonymous with difficult work. Difficult work may need more effort, focus, and exertion, but the willingness to put our all into it is different. However, difficult work and doing our best are related. A challenging skill set or project can demand we work hard to master it or complete it, but the choice to rise up and apply ourselves requires training.
Hard work is a habit. One that can fade without us realizing it. Like the high school athlete who still thinks they are in shape ten years after graduation because they once were. Our work ethics can atrophy too just like our muscles. People will avoid hard work (exerting full effort), and difficult work to protect their egos and pride. They tell themselves that they have worked hard enough in their past to justify their current levels of effort or the ease in which they perform their requirements. Maybe that’s true, but it is definitely not a mindset focused on growth and improvement.
Our society seems to be a proponent of the narrative that eventually we are not supposed to work hard anymore. We are told that “successful people” have “good jobs” where they “don’t have to work hard”. Like comparing manual labor to a white color job. Well, guess what? That is on the scale of difficulty and physicality — your job title does not mean you work hard. Your job title does not mean you put your best effort in. Your job title does not mean you care.
Allowing ourselves to stop caring about our work, or anything for that matter is a major cause of unfulfillment and unhappiness. You have to care to work hard. There is no other way. When we ask ourselves “why even bother trying?” things have gotten bad. How can we be motivated to put our full effort into something we do not have real care or interest for? We can’t. Not for long anyways.
Let us recognize that there are a few ways to define hard work. The scope of the difficulty of a task versus our effort and focus on the task. If we are distracted or flat out do not care about what we are doing, no matter how prestigious or difficult of a skill set it is we are not working hard. If we think that hard work is something we can leave in the past, then we are wrong.
It is always time.
This is the 42nd installment of Writing Wednesday. 42 weeks of consistency. 1000 words or more.
Let me know what you thought of my thoughts…
