A question I have been grappling with for quite some time is why people get praise/admiration for working long hours. One reason I believe is because it’s easy to quantify hard work. “I’ve worked 12-hour days since I can remember,” is basically saying “I hustle 100% of the time.” But scientists have found that working non-stop is bad for us, and we’re really only capable of a maximum of 45 hours of productivity a week. So why then do people continue to “work hard.”
Working Smart Isn’t as Rewarding
When I have my best workdays, Pareto efficient, I knock a ton of stuff off the to-do list. I also find my best days are when I work eight hours or less, but cram a ton into the day. A lot of times, at the end of the day, I might knock a lot off my to-do list, but a nagging feeling of “I could’ve done more” remains.
I believe part of that is we’ve been trained to believe hours quantify success. It’s believed the person who puts in the most hours is the person most passionate about what they’re doing, and thus, eventually, they’ll lead a path to success. At the end of the day, the person burning the midnight oil to achieve their goal can quantify how much time they spent producing their outputs.
Conversely, when we spend time working smart, it’s much harder to quantify work. A lot of my working smart projects take time, they’re long-term projects, and the bearer of success on these projects is far off (a month, three months, even a year or two away). This means when I work smart I (a) don’t know if my work will lead to success, and (b) what quantifies as rewarding. I try to make the quantifier on how good I feel, but it’s far more ambiguous than “I worked 12 hours today.”
Work Smart, Feel Accomplished, Live for Tomorrow
Although it’s counterintuitive to the daily “hustlers,” I have a mindset to work smart, feel accomplished, and live for tomorrow. Each day is both a fight for the best outcome for today, but also striving for a better, energized tomorrow. There isn’t a quantifier that I can reference to know if I’m going in the right direction beyond “this feels right,” but that’s all I can go off of.
If I don’t keep the work smart, feel accomplished, and live for tomorrow mindset, then I fall into the trap of working “hard” for the sake of working hard. For me, I want an accomplished life, but I refuse to make the quantifier the hours I work. Instead, I try to quantify my life in the way that I feel, as hard as that is to judge.