I'm reading this and seeing myself. 'Most people work hard with tunnel vision' - that was me. Putting in 70+ hour work weeks brought me zero accolades.
I was teaching a guy in our lab who had a long-term vision. His lack of experience was more than compensated by the funds he was raising. He won two research grants and hired two PhD candidates. He had a team so he got more done in less time.
I still work hard but my focus is on things that could buy back my freedom. Writing online is one of them. Great post, Tim.
This popped up after 25 years of hard work as a cop. I bought into it. I believed in it. And you couldn’t be more right with every letter you wrote. I did some good. This is the blueprint for my second act. Great work.
Tim. As you would imagine it to be. And realizing that harming and stealing is a component in our behavior you can’t arrest and imprison away. You don’t have to wear the uniform for 25 years to see that.
Hard work isn’t the problem. Not loving what you do is the problem because that makes it HARD TO WORK. I have made all the money I have working for others. Now I am working for myself and I haven’t made any money for a year - except payouts of deferred from previous job. We are going to have to restructure our personal balance sheet and income statement to accommodate this change. I will make money again but we will restructure regardless because it’s time. It’s not a bad thing. Reducing overhead gives you more freedom to exhale and feel less pressure from things that don’t add anything anymore. Or, the things they do add have added what they add and now they can leave. Thanks for your service - Mari Kondo-style. You can’t force yourself to write if you don’t have the urge - after trying. If you have the urge and don’t - that’s a shame. I feel as if I have a Tasmanian writing devil running around inside my chest that just has to get out. But, it needs to be tamed and shaped, so that’s why I have taken the twitter Badassery course and am signed up for the 4/28. It needs to be focused and trained so I can get better. RANT RANT
Almost at the end of my first year in a first proper office job at 27 having done all sorts previously. I like focused work for myself, not hard work for corporations.
Honestly I’ve lived a lot worse than this cushty London tech job.. but not much future in it and time to move on. Sizing up a move to Albania where I can work remote 2 days a week for money, and 3 days a week building a YouTube channel around my interests (green economics).
Did the same as a lawyer. Doing the same as a tech co exec. At some point it becomes part of who you are. I deeply admire people who can break out of this, but I also admire the nobility in endurance. Both are human.
I think I have to push back on this and maybe rephrase what you want to say. I really don't agree with the statement "Hard work is BS", but working impossible hours at the wrong task is BS. Hard work isn't a bad thing at all, and it's a necessity for success. But hard work is a vague term that is too open-ended. Maybe "Working as many hours as possible is a Bullsh*t Lie..." To be great at any one thing, it takes long-term, dedicated focus. Whether that's working 2 hours a day or 10, whatever is possible for you, it's still hard work. Hard work is still required and still completely necessary. However, to completely agree with you, burning yourself out by working impossible hours on something that doesn't suit you or your goals is a complete internet driven fraud a lot of people do believe and leads to failure inevitably.
In America, hard work = long hours. You could work ten times as hard for 5 hours, but what is visible, and therefore valued, is mediocre work for 10 hours, because then everyone can humblebrag. Even the phrase "work-life balance" is seen as negative, because it indicates that you don't place work higher than your family. Look at all the "No one wants to work" bs going around – that attitude is from an expectation that everyone, everywhere, should just work themselves to death in order to prove their worth. I think we need to change what defines our worth.
Completely agree. Saying how many hours you worked is deemed to make you a higher class citizen, but saying you work less hours to stay home with your family makes you lazy. I would much rather surround myself with people who brag about how many quality hours they spent with their kids and spouse, than someone who told me they spent their entire week in their office.
Hard work is critical to starting a career, but it shouldn't be a lifelong virtue. The goal should be to work smarter and more efficiently, thus incrementally reducing your reliance on grinding hard work...It's like a transmission in a vehicle. You've got to start in first and rev the engine a bit to get going and build momentum. But you eventually shift into higher gears, go faster, and cover more ground by working the engine less. Success is doing 70 mph on the highway in the highest gear at 2,000 RPMs. The old-school "work hard till you die" mentality leaves many people redlining their engines in first or second gear their whole lives.
I learned from personal experience. I went through a productivity/business/work optimization phase in life about ten years ago. It was like finding I had been driving in second gear or walking around with a 50-pound weight on my back. I now earn more and am more productive while working less.
Good stuff. I worked way too long in the corporate world where the badge of honor what who's spouse was the maddest because of never being home. Need to fly to Australia, better fly on the weekend because you need to be in the client's office at 8am on Monday. It nearly killed me. Thank God the company was sold and my entire division was axed. Best thing that ever happened to me.
Hard work in terms of grinding it out and working harder not smarter 100%.
I think having the self-control to identify and zero in on high-value goals, make yourself cut out what doesn't achieve them, and form one life you want from the endless possibilities is the important 'hard work'.
Nothing worth having is easy- hard work is unavoidable; but it should be smart and worth your struggle as well
Well said, set a worthwhile goal and give 100% of working hard and working smart until achieving it and then move on, don't waste more time trying to keep perfecting it, if you're now number 1 and can cash out and live well and move on to your next goal don't hang around and don't keep working 80 hour weeks for the sake of work.
I've sometimes self-accused of 'laziness' when I think I may just be looking for the smartest path up the mountain- finding the optimal mix of least resistance + gain. There's definitely a balance though, you can't spend too long looking for a perfect route without just taking action now.
The common mindset of all those restaurants in Gordon Ramsay’s tv show "Kitchen Nightmares" is complete absence of "good sense" If you use poor quality food, your restaurant is disorganized and your staff isn't trained (COMMON SENSE), you're gonna fail and your poor management is going to be passed along to the customer and you're gonna fail. Complete unawareness of what food is popular for your demographic is another inexcusable faux pas. It's not hard work, it's focused work on things that make a difference. If people keep failing at producing a good online product, there are obvious tells except it's not obvious to the people failing even with all the information available to them. You'd better get my attention in the first couple of lines. and it better be on a subject that 15 other people aren't writing on, in the same exact way.
Oh wow, yes, this is me. For so long, I believed that the more overworked I was, the better I was doing. I crashed, reset, and then chased things with no real value again. I still exchange my time for money instead of utilizing these micro-skills.
This was a great post to read. I am trying to focus on slowing down instead of cramming my schedule full, putting my personal goals on hold, and telling myself, "I'll be happy when..."
I tried the hard work thing for 5 years in a software company and realized that exchanging time for money is a closed loop I can't get out of. So I started a company and went for a graduate degree simultaneously. Everybody called me crazy. Even after getting the degree I never stopped learning and the first company has gotten a little sister 8 years ago.
Yeah, I thought so. Thanks for responding and trying to get rid of people who claim to be you. I believe this should be reported to the security team at Substack so they can look for stuff like this
I did that for many years because I couldn't find a better way. I just became a full subscriber. I want to know how to do it. I was admitted to a Master's program for this fall that's expensive. I need to get my ass in gear.
This is so true. I’m learning more skills now and finding my natural abilities to boot that 9-5 hid from me all those years! 💜
How you can you speed up the process?
I'm reading this and seeing myself. 'Most people work hard with tunnel vision' - that was me. Putting in 70+ hour work weeks brought me zero accolades.
I was teaching a guy in our lab who had a long-term vision. His lack of experience was more than compensated by the funds he was raising. He won two research grants and hired two PhD candidates. He had a team so he got more done in less time.
I still work hard but my focus is on things that could buy back my freedom. Writing online is one of them. Great post, Tim.
We appreciate your honesty and POV Denis. Freedom isn’t free but the view is fantastic.
Myles, have you read Denis on medium?
You’re right—he’s got cool channels in Pragmatic Wisdom and Career Paths—-counterintuitive—-like someone we know :-)
HeyTim, no I haven’t- I’ll go check him out though. Thanks for the heads up!
Thanks, Myles.
:)
Hey Denis, Tim Denning told me to check you out on Medium—-Career Paths and Pragmatic Wisdom looks cool for a hot summer day. I followed you….
Hi Myles, I'm happy to connect. Will check out your M page in an instant.
You and I are on the same journey. What was the moment Denis that made you make the change?
When my boss said I'd have to leave.
This popped up after 25 years of hard work as a cop. I bought into it. I believed in it. And you couldn’t be more right with every letter you wrote. I did some good. This is the blueprint for my second act. Great work.
Norm, what's it like being a cop?
Tim. As you would imagine it to be. And realizing that harming and stealing is a component in our behavior you can’t arrest and imprison away. You don’t have to wear the uniform for 25 years to see that.
This is a profound comment.
Also thanks for sharing your experiences.
Great decision Norm! Timbo has a way to cut, dice, and slice our mentality into reality. Good for you.
I’m a newbie here. You’ve welcomed me to the tribe with your comment. Thanks, Miles.
My time at Stratton Oakmont (The Wolf Of Wall Street) https://t.co/M9b7aaSsNQ
I love this story. Were you depicted in any of the movies?
Yes - in the movie Boiler Room - though the pitch and two of my rebuttals that I had written were used in both
In the process of taking my nanotechnology company public
The comment above was a scam. Please disregard. Someone is impersonating me.
Hard work isn’t the problem. Not loving what you do is the problem because that makes it HARD TO WORK. I have made all the money I have working for others. Now I am working for myself and I haven’t made any money for a year - except payouts of deferred from previous job. We are going to have to restructure our personal balance sheet and income statement to accommodate this change. I will make money again but we will restructure regardless because it’s time. It’s not a bad thing. Reducing overhead gives you more freedom to exhale and feel less pressure from things that don’t add anything anymore. Or, the things they do add have added what they add and now they can leave. Thanks for your service - Mari Kondo-style. You can’t force yourself to write if you don’t have the urge - after trying. If you have the urge and don’t - that’s a shame. I feel as if I have a Tasmanian writing devil running around inside my chest that just has to get out. But, it needs to be tamed and shaped, so that’s why I have taken the twitter Badassery course and am signed up for the 4/28. It needs to be focused and trained so I can get better. RANT RANT
Almost at the end of my first year in a first proper office job at 27 having done all sorts previously. I like focused work for myself, not hard work for corporations.
Honestly I’ve lived a lot worse than this cushty London tech job.. but not much future in it and time to move on. Sizing up a move to Albania where I can work remote 2 days a week for money, and 3 days a week building a YouTube channel around my interests (green economics).
Did the same as a lawyer. Doing the same as a tech co exec. At some point it becomes part of who you are. I deeply admire people who can break out of this, but I also admire the nobility in endurance. Both are human.
I think I have to push back on this and maybe rephrase what you want to say. I really don't agree with the statement "Hard work is BS", but working impossible hours at the wrong task is BS. Hard work isn't a bad thing at all, and it's a necessity for success. But hard work is a vague term that is too open-ended. Maybe "Working as many hours as possible is a Bullsh*t Lie..." To be great at any one thing, it takes long-term, dedicated focus. Whether that's working 2 hours a day or 10, whatever is possible for you, it's still hard work. Hard work is still required and still completely necessary. However, to completely agree with you, burning yourself out by working impossible hours on something that doesn't suit you or your goals is a complete internet driven fraud a lot of people do believe and leads to failure inevitably.
In America, hard work = long hours. You could work ten times as hard for 5 hours, but what is visible, and therefore valued, is mediocre work for 10 hours, because then everyone can humblebrag. Even the phrase "work-life balance" is seen as negative, because it indicates that you don't place work higher than your family. Look at all the "No one wants to work" bs going around – that attitude is from an expectation that everyone, everywhere, should just work themselves to death in order to prove their worth. I think we need to change what defines our worth.
Completely agree. Saying how many hours you worked is deemed to make you a higher class citizen, but saying you work less hours to stay home with your family makes you lazy. I would much rather surround myself with people who brag about how many quality hours they spent with their kids and spouse, than someone who told me they spent their entire week in their office.
Hard work is critical to starting a career, but it shouldn't be a lifelong virtue. The goal should be to work smarter and more efficiently, thus incrementally reducing your reliance on grinding hard work...It's like a transmission in a vehicle. You've got to start in first and rev the engine a bit to get going and build momentum. But you eventually shift into higher gears, go faster, and cover more ground by working the engine less. Success is doing 70 mph on the highway in the highest gear at 2,000 RPMs. The old-school "work hard till you die" mentality leaves many people redlining their engines in first or second gear their whole lives.
Love this analogy!!
I learned from personal experience. I went through a productivity/business/work optimization phase in life about ten years ago. It was like finding I had been driving in second gear or walking around with a 50-pound weight on my back. I now earn more and am more productive while working less.
Did it take some time in 1st gear before you were able to move into 2nd and 3rd gear?
Good stuff. I worked way too long in the corporate world where the badge of honor what who's spouse was the maddest because of never being home. Need to fly to Australia, better fly on the weekend because you need to be in the client's office at 8am on Monday. It nearly killed me. Thank God the company was sold and my entire division was axed. Best thing that ever happened to me.
Hard work in terms of grinding it out and working harder not smarter 100%.
I think having the self-control to identify and zero in on high-value goals, make yourself cut out what doesn't achieve them, and form one life you want from the endless possibilities is the important 'hard work'.
Nothing worth having is easy- hard work is unavoidable; but it should be smart and worth your struggle as well
Well said, set a worthwhile goal and give 100% of working hard and working smart until achieving it and then move on, don't waste more time trying to keep perfecting it, if you're now number 1 and can cash out and live well and move on to your next goal don't hang around and don't keep working 80 hour weeks for the sake of work.
I've sometimes self-accused of 'laziness' when I think I may just be looking for the smartest path up the mountain- finding the optimal mix of least resistance + gain. There's definitely a balance though, you can't spend too long looking for a perfect route without just taking action now.
The common mindset of all those restaurants in Gordon Ramsay’s tv show "Kitchen Nightmares" is complete absence of "good sense" If you use poor quality food, your restaurant is disorganized and your staff isn't trained (COMMON SENSE), you're gonna fail and your poor management is going to be passed along to the customer and you're gonna fail. Complete unawareness of what food is popular for your demographic is another inexcusable faux pas. It's not hard work, it's focused work on things that make a difference. If people keep failing at producing a good online product, there are obvious tells except it's not obvious to the people failing even with all the information available to them. You'd better get my attention in the first couple of lines. and it better be on a subject that 15 other people aren't writing on, in the same exact way.
Oh wow, yes, this is me. For so long, I believed that the more overworked I was, the better I was doing. I crashed, reset, and then chased things with no real value again. I still exchange my time for money instead of utilizing these micro-skills.
This was a great post to read. I am trying to focus on slowing down instead of cramming my schedule full, putting my personal goals on hold, and telling myself, "I'll be happy when..."
I tried the hard work thing for 5 years in a software company and realized that exchanging time for money is a closed loop I can't get out of. So I started a company and went for a graduate degree simultaneously. Everybody called me crazy. Even after getting the degree I never stopped learning and the first company has gotten a little sister 8 years ago.
Is Monday ok?
The comment above was a scam. Please disregard. Someone is impersonating me.
Yeah, I thought so. Thanks for responding and trying to get rid of people who claim to be you. I believe this should be reported to the security team at Substack so they can look for stuff like this
“But the real luxury is this: going slow.” I love this.
I did that for many years because I couldn't find a better way. I just became a full subscriber. I want to know how to do it. I was admitted to a Master's program for this fall that's expensive. I need to get my ass in gear.