“The harder I work, the emptier I feel.” – Unknown
Malcolm Gladwell is one of my favorite authors.
In his words from his best selling book “Outliers“, “we need at least 10,000 hours to become an expert in a certain field, this is equivalent to 40 hours a week for 5 years.”
Now my only concern is that a large portion of the human population work 40 hours in a week in their working life.
Are they all experts in their field?
I don’t think so, probably you also think the same way.
My other favorite author is Angela Duckworth.
Her words in her best selling book “Grit“, “hard work is grit, a combination of passion and perseverance, which is bigger than IQ and socioeconomic status. When things get tough, get gritty, since this may eventually lead to success.”
How many people actually appear gritty in real life?
I guess a lot less.
Here is one of my heroes in my life.
I don’t know what to say before his name. There are so many adjectives, Warren Buffett, his words, “hard work only comes if you take the job that you would take if you were independently wealthy.”
If I compare these three expert’s statements together, it’s hard to make a judgement now which direction the hard work is moving.
How many people do you think work hard if they are already financially independent?
Definition of hard work
My whole purpose here is to know what makes our work hard?
Why do we always say we need to work hard but still we get lost on what exactly is hard work?
Is our life designed to work hard until we die?
If not then what do we do the rest of our life?
The truth is we have one body and one mind for the rest of our life, we have to take care of them for a very long time.
Does only hard work support this or is there something else?
We all know the race of a tortoise and a hare.
The hare goes fast and quickly gets distracted because it knows it’s going to win.
The tortoise just keeps going continuously, even though its chances to win are almost impossible.
And despite all the odds, difficulties, and challenges, the tortoise ends up winning.
The morale is, never give up and distracted by noises, be the tortoise.
No problem if we’re slow but the goal is always to be steady. Enjoy the process without much end results.
Either crawl slowly or walk step by step, or run, but don’t stress out and give up.
Life is absolutely not a sprint, it’s a marathon because I’m a marathon runner.
I’m not just preaching, I’ve done it.
At least I try.
At least, nowadays, I always try as much as I can whatever I say as an experimental scientist. I want to try, if I like the idea, process, and destination considering the available resources.
For example, I never thought I’d run a marathon in my life, 26.2 miles.
But I did it, one step at a time, few miles in a day practice for six month for first marathon.
When I started running regularly, I knew what dopamine does in our body. After a certain time of running, I became addicted to dopamine. It gave me feelings of pleasure and satisfaction both.
I learned that if we fix our eyes on our dream, it happens.
It might take some time but eventually it happens.
So, I like to be the tortoise in life, not the hare.
For me being a tortoise is hard work.
Not much expectation, be relaxed, patient, and keep going, keep moving.
This story of tortoise and hare has not only the symbolic meaning but also the long term strategy.
Seth Godin, author of 20 best selling books including the latest “This Is Strategy” says “strategy is a broader framework, it’s about your long term vision and how you plan to achieve it.”
The most meaningful things often take many years or decades to appear in our lives.
Refusing to accept this reality only hinders our progress.
Therefore, hard work is a simple process of life to reach somewhere in a relaxed, easy, and patient way.
I always appreciate one quote from Bill Gates, “most of us overestimate what we can do in one year and underestimate what we can do in ten years.”
We can’t do anything all at once, but we can select what’s most important and do one thing at a time.
We will be amazed by how much we can accomplish over time with steady focus.
I’ve heard many times people saying I can’t run or I’m not a runner even though I run everyday.
In my view, there is a huge difference between “I failed running” and “I’m not a runner.”
Former is the consequence of weak preparation and poor decision making but the latter is our own personal characteristic.
So we have to treat them very carefully.
We don’t grow at once, we grow as mature and professional humans over time.
For example, where I was five years ago is completely different from where I’m today, and eventually where I’ll be five years from now.
My special need of where I belong and the need of what matters to me are the two most powerful needs a human being has, and that determines the definition of hard work.
Personalization of success
My hard work must align with both my need of belonging and need to matter.
I’m either going to belong and matter here or I’m going to be controlled by other people’s opinions.
If we are not careful, we can spend years working hard on something that eventually ends up with nothing. I can relate this to one of my two years postdoctoral work where I spent my days and nights compromising with my family and kids but got nothing.
We have to make sure we are living the life we want, not what other people prescribe for us or think we need.
Even if we are working hard but only on others’ prescription we reach nowhere.
Don’t just absorb success what others think, choose intentionally what success looks like for you and do the hard work on that.
Success for each person is completely different, here are 8 secrets among many in this TedTalk.
Remember society always feeds us the prescribed diet of what it believes is important and successful.
But many of us are unable to personalize it. This is one of my regrets in life but I let go of my regret now. I’m happy. I practiced it over and over.
The story of tortoise and hare reminds me of another thing in life, the difference between hurry and busy.
Hare works in a hurry and tortoise remains busy.
If we are always in a hurry, we completely forget the meaning of real living. One of my postdoctoral work was hurry.
Hurry is simply going fast and done, but being busy is something deeper, being more engaged and attentive. My second postdoctoral work was busy.
The lesson I learned is our hard work must be busy, not hurry.
Nowadays we’re so caught up in just surviving the day, running and rushing from one urgent thing to the next.
We will miss to build something long-lasting, permanent, and worthy in life.
For example, for society, one of the parameters of success is money, and money comes only from hard work. Money also comes from hurry but doesn’t last long. My personal experience, I made some money by stock trading but I completely lost it in three weeks and gave up stock trading.
I didn’t study money carefully, it made me paralyzed even if I made some money by stock trading.
Money is a magnifying glass. It makes us more of who we are from inside.
If I’m generous, growth minded, and hard working, I’ll be even more, generous, growth minded, and hard working with more money.
If I’m self centered, fixed minded, and corrupted, I’ll be even more self centered, fixed minded, and corrupted with more money.
I’m trying to use money as my tool to broaden my identity.
Who I’m and who I’m becoming has very little to do with what I’m achieving with money.
Hard work and love
Another misconception our society feeds us is the poor understanding of love in our lives.
Can hard work buy love?
One of my former girlfriends before marriage always used to ask me, “do you really love me?” I was very annoyed with this question because it used to come repeatedly in her mind.
This is the wrong question our society taught us to ask.
If we ask this question, the answer always comes with ‘if’.
You get what I mean.
We always get the answer and that is always, “yes, I love you if you are…..”
“Yes, I love you if you are handsome or beautiful or intelligent or wealthy or with an MBA or PhD or MD or a corporate job or…”
“Our boss loves us if we give the best results or best sales.”
Our love is always associated with ‘if’, our love is always conditional.
These many ‘ifs’ in our lives take us nowhere even if we replace many “ifs” with hard work.
We end up being exhausted, lost, depressed, and always unsatisfied because there are so many extra “ifs” to finish in this one life.
We appear to be in love in the eyes of society but actually not really.
Conclusion
One thing that can remove ‘ifs” in our love is by practicing gratitude, humility, and empathy. These are significant not only in personal life but also in business life.
These are mechanisms that help us learn where hard work doesn’t become hard anymore.
We live in a culture that’s all about me, me, me.
We live in a society that always says more work, more work, more work.
If we practice gratitude, humility, and empathy, hard work does not seem hard. Me, no more remains only me, more work only becomes work with joy.
Once we become habituated with these human mechanisms, we develop contentment.
Love without ‘ifs” is nothing but a result of the habit of gratitude, humility, and empathy.
These habits strengthen no ‘ifs’ in love, the love for you as you are, and the love for hard work.
When it comes to hard work, I remind myself with Banksy’s quote “If you get tired, learn to rest, not to quit.”
Yam Timsina, PhD, writes primarily on health basics, scientific progress, social upliftment, and value creation.
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