The Myth Of Hard Work: It Matters Less Than You Think
Yes, you should work hard. But, what you choose to work on and the quality of your decisions matters far more to your success and wealth than hard work.
For a long time, "hard work" was a part of my identity. I wasn't the best athlete growing up, but I worked really hard. I wasn't the smartest in school, but I studied really hard.
And now I'm realizing in adulthood that it's not enough!
It’s better to be patient and calculated as you wait for the right opportunity to come along than it is to work yourself to the bone on the wrong thing.
Hard work matters, but ONLY if you’re working on the right thing with the right people. Read on to see how the richest people in the world break this down.
Charlie Munger: Fish Where The Fish Are.
Charlie Munger has a great analogy for working on the right project. He tells us to fish where the fish are.
There’s no point in dragging yourself up at 5 a.m. in the cold darkness, diligently prepping your fishing gear, heading out on the water only to sit around for 3-hours in an area without a single fish! That’s a waste of hard work.
Here’s Munger explaining this to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders:
There’s a rule of fishing that’s a very good rule. The first rule of fishing is “fish where the fish are,” and the second rule of fishing is “don’t forget rule number one.” And in investing it’s the same thing. Some places have lots of fish, and you don’t have to be that good a fisherman to do pretty well. Other places are so heavily fished that no matter how good a fisherman you are, you aren’t going to do very well.
The goal is to choose the right thing to work on. If you’re in the right space, it won’t matter if there are more talented people in your field - you can still do really well.
Here’s Warren Buffett saying the same thing differently:
When a manager with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, the reputation of the business remains intact.
It’s a good reminder that no amount of hard work will save you from a dying industry (or an empty pond). Fish where the fish are!
Naval Ravikant: Success Is A Three-Legged Stool.
Naval Ravikant stresses that hard work is not sufficient for success. It’s necessary, but not enough on its own. Hard work is part of a three-legged stool that includes what you work on and who you work with.
Here’s Ravikant in a blog post called Work As Hard As You Can:
You can save a lot of time by picking the right area to work in. Picking the right people to work with is the next most important piece. Third comes how hard you work. They are like three legs of a stool. If you shortchange any one of them, the whole stool is going to fall. You can’t easily pick one over the other.
When you’re building a business, or a career, first figure out: “What should I be doing? Where is a market emerging? What’s a product I can build that I’m excited to work on, where I have specific knowledge?”
Most people do not take nearly enough time considering what to work on. Humans are pre-programmed with a scarcity mentally, which means we often jump at the first or second opportunity we see. Fight this tendency!
Just because someone offers you the opportunity to write for a print newspaper does NOT mean you should take it. Consider the economics of the business. You don’t want to take on something that has you working your butt off running uphill! Look at the industry and ask yourself if it’s ripe with opportunity and growth.
My Career: Reality TV Vs. Branded Content
I’ve experienced this first hand in my career. My first real job was developing and selling reality T.V. This was 2011 when the market for unscripted TV shows was extremely saturated. But I didn’t think about that. I had a job offer right out of university, and I was going to take it!
Well, despite working ourselves to the bone, my boss and I could not get a show on the air. It was hopeless. We were fishing in a place so heavily fished that it didn’t matter how good we were (and my boss was really good) or how hard we worked! We were fishing in a terrible pond.
Then, I jumped to branded content. What a different story! This was an emerging industry based on the rising value of YouTube content on the internet. I immediately found success and went on to do millions of dollars in business for the company I worked for. There were plenty of fish!
Your industry really matters. Take some time to consider the economics of the business you are thinking about entering. It will matter far more than how hard you work.
Felix Dennis: Look For Emerging Industries.
Fortunately, there’s a simple model for discerning great industries: look for ones that are newly emerging.
The late Maxim founder, Felix Dennis, tells us it’s easier to get rich in an emerging field - something right out on the edge of technology. Dennis writes (in his must-read book) How To Get Rich:
New or rapidly developing industries, whether glamorous or not, very often provide more opportunities to get rich than established sectors. The three reasons for this are availability of risk capital, ignorance and the power of a rising tide.
According to Dennis, you should be looking for:
Growing industries with relatively low start-up costs
And avoiding:
Declining industries
Industries that need huge start-up investment
The power of a rising tide. That’s what you want to propel you to success. Not hard work alone.
When You Work On The Right Thing, It Doesn’t Feel Like Work.
Here’s a simple model to know if you’re working on the right thing: it doesn’t feel like work.
Don’t get this confused - it will still be difficult. But, it’s the difficulty of playing a game you really enjoy. Is playing a professional sport difficult? I assume incredibly so. Is it fun? Definitely. That same rules should apply to what you choose to work on.
Writing for Wealest consistently isn’t “easy.” It doesn’t happen on its own. But it doesn’t feel like work. I love writing for an audience and sharing my ideas and the ideas of wealth creators. This is work that feels like play.
Here’s Naval Ravikant again:
Building specific knowledge will feel like play to you but will look like work to others.
Find the stuff that feels like play - the stuff that lights you up. If you dread waking up in the morning because of the work you have to do, you’re working on the wrong stuff. The right work should not feel like work.
Don’t Track “Time Spent.” Track Output.
Hard work should not be measured by the number of arbitrary hours you sit at a desk. No one does really great work for 8-hours a day anyway. You can get maybe three hours of really high quality, creative work per day. That’s it.
Instead of tracking hours put in, track output. Here’s Ravikant in a post called The 80-hour Myth:
First, measure outputs, not inputs, in yourself and your organization. Otherwise, you will be fooled by the modern knowledge worker, who is highly adapted to spend time at the office and manage upwards.
If you can produce a single output in a two-week burst that pays for your entire year, it doesn’t really matter how you spend the rest of your time. You certainly don’t need to sit at a desk to put in your “8-hours.” This is possible in professions that are highly leveraged, where your judgment matters more to the output than anything else.
Output Comes In Short Bursts of Productivity.
When you measure output instead of input, you’ll find that progress comes in bursts where you crank out a lot of output in a short period of time. Here’s Ravikant again:
Your best work was probably done in tremendous, focused bursts, surrounded by long periods of dullness and inactivity… [So] measure productivity over a longer time-scale, say weeks and months rather than days. Some of the most creative and productive people that I have ever met work in multi-week bursts and then have weeks where they just idle with little done. It’s the nature of the human animal.
I’m trying to structure my life in focused bursts of output - in two or three week stretches that build products that scale the rest of the year. I am not interested in arbitrary 8-hour chunks of “hard work.” Such a stretch does not exist.
Hard work matters, but only if you’re working on the right thing with the right people. Find what you’re meant to do first, then pour hard work on that fire. And keep going.
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ARTICLE SOURCES
Naval Ravikant: Work As Hard As You Can
Naval Ravikant: The 80-Hour Myth
Dennis, Felix. How to Get Rich: One of the World's Greatest Entrepreneurs Shares His Secrets. Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.