Are You Working Hard Enough?

The Orange Stack
May 8, 2018
3 min read

Getting what you want in life is not easy. Whether it’s a better job, more sales, a better family life, or even a toned body. The currency of life is that if you want something, there is a price to pay. That price varies and depends on what you are asking for. While you may try to bargain with life and take shortcuts, in many cases you must pay the sticker price for what you want. It is like going to the store and picking an item. No matter how much you want it and how long you hold on to it inside the store, it will never be yours and you can never leave without paying for it. In this article, I will tell you how to pay full price for what you want and leave with whatever you want from the store of life.

Work Harder

You have probably met people who tell you they work 10 hours at the office and get home late. They call it the grind and they feel proud of their effort. What is interesting is that if you were to audit their hours, you would find they have 15 minutes here and there where they were not working. This can work out to almost two hours out of the ten. This is not working hard. It is staying late at the office. Working hard is making every minute count. It means looking back on your day and seeing there was not a moment lost in some idle activity. It means auditing your time, so you know where you are wasting time and how you can plug in some more work into these moments. This does not mean you have to work for 16 hours a day. What it means is that if you commit to working even 5 hours a day, you are hyper-focused and making every minute count.

Work Faster

Effort will get you to the end of the race, but speed will help you win the race. If you work a certain number of hours a day, take some time to see how fast you are working and whether you can increase this tempo. For many people, lack of speed is what makes them less effective in their work. They put in the hours and they are committed but they have not invested in working up the speed at which they work. If you think about it, in sports, speed matters sometimes even more than effort. In a race, it’s not the person burning the most calories who wins, it’s the one combining effort and speed in the most efficient manner who wins.

Work Smarter

Working harder and faster is great, but only if you are focusing on the right tasks. If you are not, you will only get to the wrong destination faster. As you focus on working harder and faster, start by clearly defining the direction you want to head. What tasks are important, and which can wait till later? How are your efforts balanced out with the rest of your life? How will working harder and faster affect your health and what will you do about it? Asking these questions will help you work in a way that balances out your life and allows for growth in all areas of your being.

If you hear people talking about the grind and how hard they work, don’t believe the hype. We are all pretty good at tooting our own horns. Focus your time and effort on outworking everyone in the room and there will be none to challenge your success.