hard work

Efficiency is more important than how hard one works. Really? As proud as so many of us appear to be about our hard work, I am not that sure anymore what counts. People love to make their money with hard work. What is the true value of hard work and where did the idea originate?

Genesis 2, 17 – 19: Adam got his sorry ass kicked out of Paradise. He was condemned to hard work for life. Why? Because he listened to his wife too much. Hard work is the ultimate punishment for those who give somebody else's opinion weight and value, while neglecting their own better judgment. Hard work is the dumbass treatment for mediocrity. Actually, mediocrity and hard work resemble the chicken and egg syndrome. No one knows for sure what came first. We do know hard work struggles to compensate for mediocrity, and the result of hard work will always be mediocre at best.

Remember high school? Your mediocre classmates were working the hardest. Your loser colleagues and the best performers didn't seem to work all that much. Being terrible in school requires nothing, and the best didn't have to work because things were falling into their laps, or so it looked. The top people were busy, perhaps, but they were also relaxed and had reserves.

Serious hard work has no room for relaxation. It's nothing to be proud of. The harder you work, the tighter you become and the closer you are inching up to the brink of failure. Success is a rare and random result of a hard-working person and by definition extremely temporary. It is simple, when you work hard you are operating near your limitations. There is not much room for improvement and expansion, and sooner or later someone will surpass you. Hard work traps you in the status quo.

Parental approval may have been the first questionable gain motivating you at a young age to buy into that cute yet futile ideology. In the adult world, no one cares for hard work. Markets don't reward it. The hardest working people in any society are the poorest and it has always been that way. Socialist societies are no exception. You work hard, you lose. You are out of breath, you can't win, you won't be happy. Not even money approves of your daily grind.

Did I say you should do nothing, instead? Not that I recall. The alternative to hard work is not some sort of catatonic state. Being active and busy is more fun than laziness. Indeed, it is impossible to do absolutely nothing, unless you are dead of course. Whether you like it or not, whether you're consciously aware of it or not matters little: you are active 24/7, even in your sleep.

Some activities feel like work, while others feel like fun. Interestingly, what's perceived to be hard work for you may be someone else's recreational enjoyment. How so? The average car mechanic whines about his hard job, but you can find an architect somewhere or a lawyer who spends every free minute under his vintage Jaguar. I know commercial airline pilots who seem to be working pretty hard, but when they come home their idea of relaxing means flying experimental aircraft. These guys may be working a lot, certainly not hard. No motivation needed to get them to work. Incentives? That type of B.S. is reserved for people who hate what they do and who beg to be dragged through life like dead rats.

What gets your juices flowing? Think Lance Armstrong. Riding a bicycle hundred miles per day, almost every single day of the year, years and years in a row, looks like an exhausting task to me. For Mr. Armstrong it meant life. What do you do when you find yourself in “the zone”? What sort of activity does not feel like work for you at all, and others are surprised how you can keep at it for so long without taking a break?

It is your work to find the work that is no work. That will make you efficient.

Screw hard work,

Egbert