Ruthless hard work

From my general observation of the people around me and even those far away from me, when I look at what hard work in various context is, it comes out very differently.

• For some hard work means going out every day to do the most monotonous job, which might be very demanding physically or mentally, e.g; builders, taxi drivers, cashiers etc
• For others hard work means an endless rush of creativity, always living on the edge of either success or disaster, jobs always hanging by a thread, and you have to push creativity to the max, e.g; Bankers, CEOs, businessmen etc
• Yet again, for some others, hard work is just trying their bare minimum then complain about why they don’t have much more. e.g. small businesses, shopkeepers etc

For each of these group of persons, they consider what they do as hard work, they consider themselves as very hardworking no matter the results they obtain. In their minds what they do and how often they do it represents their hard work, meanwhile when they look at what others are doing, they might easily judge it as laziness.

Ask a builder for example, he would consider himself very hardworking meanwhile when he looks at a CEO riding in their beautiful car, he sees such a person as lazy. The same goes for a CEO, he might consider a simple shopkeeper as being lazy meanwhile when he looks at what he is able to accomplish he considers himself hardworking, likewise for the last group, when they look at their circumstances and what they are able to do, they’ll consider others lazy.

Each person seems to have a personalized metric of what hard work is. The first group bases it on the strain on their bodies or minds, while the second group bases its hard work on the results they can achieve, and the final group on the stress they are able to sustain. That’s why it's easy for everyone to be critical of everybody else because they don’t base themselves on the same metric for evaluating their hard work. We can argue all day long about who works harder than the other, but I’ll rather focus on what they all have in common.

Hard work involves persistence

These aren’t the only groups we can bring out when we consider the different work forces in society, there are many more, but for the sake of simplicity I’ll work with just these 3. One thing which is common among all these groups is the persistence with which they do their jobs. If a person was able to obtain some amazing results in a record amount of time, they’ll not be looked at as hardworking but rather very lucky. So we see that hard work and persistence are closely related and directly proportional.

Hard work involves Resilience

Say what you want about each group, but it's pretty clear that there is an element of resilience which has to be found in a hard-working person. This is also an important metric when it comes to the results a person will be able to achieve. Without resilience, you can’t be considered a hard working person, you’ll already have given up when faced with the first difficulty.

Discipline & Sacrifice

Above all else hard work involves discipline and sacrifice, we would all certainly have a better place to be or something different to do. Whether its just sitting idle or spending time with our children, there are a million other things we’ll rather do than to wake up every morning very early and head for a job we barely even like. In order to be hard working you’ll need to be disciplined and ready to make many sacrifices, this directly impacts the results you will be able to achieve. Take for example business owners, you don’t get to run the business as you see fit but rather have to make yourself available to meet the demand, sacrificing your free will.

Meaning

Hard work must be surrounded by a purpose, for some its a way to get out of poverty, for others its a way to acquire status, yet again for some others its a means to a desired end. Having a meaning for what you are doing is like the oil which makes the car move smoothly without that there will be a lot of friction. What ends up differentiating persons and how hard the work is the purpose behind their hard work. Some don’t have the resolve to build a skyscraper, while others are determined to breach through the skies.

Struggle

Finally, there is also a great deal of struggle which comes with having to work hard, nothing worthwhile can be acquired without a little bit of struggle and this is different not just for the various groups but even for persons in the same group and also based on what you want to do. For some born at the right time and place, they have very little struggles in their lives, for others who were less fortunate, they have a lot of struggles, this eventually makes a huge difference for every group and person.

Conclusion

Working hard comes in different shapes, forms and sizes, inasmuch as we might not be in the same category, there are common traits associated to our hard work. I didn’t even mention results because they come in last and are not a fair way to evaluate the hard work of a person. To know how hard working you are, you have to look at; persistence, resilience, discipline, meaning, struggles and much more. What you’ll notice is that the most hard working persons have these stats turned to the max.

Thanks for reading ☺️