HARD WORK?

What does it mean to work hard?

I see that advice all the time. If you want to succeed at what you do it takes hard work.

There are no instructions on how to work hard, just as there are no guidelines on how to focus.  If someone tells you to focus, they never tell you how to do it. They just assume that you know how to focus even if they don't know how to do it themselves

It's the same with hard work. There are no instructions on how to work hard. Does working hard mean staying up late at night or working all day without taking a break? Do you succeed if you take on more work? Is that what hard work means?

I've been working on this blog since eight thirty this morning.  It's now almost four thirty in the afternoon. It's taken me that long to string these words together for them to convey what it is I want them to do which is to express my thoughts about hard work. Usually blogs don't take that long for me to write but this one did.

If you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life. If I ask you to write a novel and you don't like to write, no matter how hard you work chances are the book won't be any good because you don't like writing. If I ask Stephen King to write a novel, not only will it be well written, but it’ll probably be a best seller as well because Stephen King loves to write. For him, spending hundreds of hours writing and re-writing isn't work at all. It's just another part of what it is he loves to do.

We're told that in order to be a success, we have to work hard. But all the hard work in the world won't matter if you don't like what it is you're doing. The best job or career to have is the one where you're doing what you love to do while getting paid to do it. Figure out what that is. Then the work won't be hard at all.