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Why Hard Work IS Smart Work and
How to Work Hard Smart
by Dov Gordon
Many people
work 10, 12 or even 14 hour days because they don’t want to
work hard. Long
hours may be exhausting,
but it is also the easy way out.
Real hard work
is done at the bottleneck.
And the tightest bottleneck in
your business is… you. And
the tightest bottleneck in you… is in
your head. It’s the
stories you tell
yourself, the nonsense like “I don’t have any time!” and “We don’t have
a
choice” and “But my business is different” and “Our market is changing
too fast
to have a strategy” and “You just can’t find good people out there..”
and so on.
Let’s
distinguish between labor and
work. Digging ditches is labor. Allow me to suggest that
fourteen hours in
the office is also labor. Real work, the hard work that will change
your
business and your life, is the work you do on yourself.
And it’s different for each of us.
Your hard work
might be something as
simple as getting in
and out of bed on time. It might be planning your year, quarter,
month, week and day.
Hard work for
you might be to talk less.
To listen to what the people
around you are actually saying; to notice how
they are feeling.
Your hard work
might be to slow down – so you can finally speed up.
It might be to turn off your phone
so you can
work for 90 minutes without interruption.
It might be checking your email
twice a day instead of twice a minute.
It may be to bite your tongue and
take a deep
breath when you-know-who is at it again. To stop complaining and start
appreciating; to play a game of chess with your son or read a book to
your
daughter.
Your hard work
may be – believe it or not – to work less.
To step back.
To listen.
To enjoy.
To let go.
To give up those delusions of
control you imagine you have, or imagine
you need.
If your job is
knowledge work, your hard
work isn’t physical labor. It’s
discipline and focus; it’s mental work.
Shut your
computer and go for a walk.
Put down the newspaper and pick up
a good biography. Become genuinely
interested in a competing point of view and hear it out until you
understand
the other side. You
may not be swayed,
but you will learn and grow from it.
Identify what
wastes your time and figure out how to stop it or minimize
it.
Perhaps you
need to say “no” to other people’s best intentions.
Or to exercise.
Eat a fruit instead of a chocolate
bar or a cheese
Danish. Get out to a park or a coffee shop with a notepad and pencil,
away from
phones and internet.
Give up
perfectionism. It keeps you from excellence in the small number
of areas where you are truly gifted.
Maybe you need
to listen to that inner
voice. It knows when
you do what you do because you are concerned about what
others will think. It
knows when you
redouble your efforts in the wrong direction because you think you have
no
choice – at the expense of following your calling.
It knows when fear is your fuel. And it knows that you will
make a profound
and lasting impact when you switch your fuel to love.
Slow down and
set up systems so you can reduce your labor. Then work even
harder. On yourself.
A life of
leisure isn’t what you want so stop acting as if it were. You, a body and a soul,
want a life of
growth, of purpose, of contribution.
Let’s
stop deluding ourselves. We
need to stop
striving for the mythical existence fed to us by those whose interests
are not
our own.
The only way to get there is by
working hard on ourselves.
It hurts.
Oh yes, it hurts.
But it is also
a great pleasure. Exercise
hurts. It also
feels great.
Indulgence is
no match for the lasting pleasure of discipline and growth;
of catching yourself in the act of telling a good and convincing story
– to
yourself - and changing direction.
It is
awareness; noticing when that story you tell yourself is one you
wouldn’t
accept from your own children or employees.
Yet, from yourself you swallow
them whole.
Real hard work
– and the truly smart work – is about knowing thyself.
I will step off this soapbox now.
I am reminded that I’ve got an
awful lot of hard work to do...
---
DOV
GORDON helps small
company owners make scary decisions and then quickly get things
done. He
is sought after for his perspective and advice on formulating and
implementing
strategy, developing strong and effective management and cultivating
innovation.
If you
lead a small and growing company, ask us about the Small
Company Coaching Club
and 1 – 1 Executive
Coaching. Dov
can be
reached via his website http://www.GordonGroupEC.com or via email
at dovgordon@gmail.com.
+++++++++++
Archives of The CEO Thought-Provoker™ are
here:
http://www.gordongroupec.com/articles.html
+++++++++
Dov
Gordon
helps senior
executives at small and mid-sized companies around the world to earn
the respect and admiration of their marketplace. Clients
benefit from clarifying their strategies, sharpening their focus,
better decision making, improved teamwork and growing into great
leaders.
Management and
Strategy Consulting.
Executive
Coaching.
+++++++++
You
may republish and redistribute this article provided that you
include (1) the full article with the attribution at the end, (2) a
link to
www.GordonGroupEC.com
in the attribution and (3) You must notify us before
you use this piece to confirm this
is still available.
Please
email me your
thoughts and feedback.
See our
recommended reading list at:
www.GordonGroupEC.com/books.html
Copyright 2009
© by Dov Gordon. All rights reserved.
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