What To do Instead of Just Working Hard if You Want To Get Rich?

If you go into a desert and start digging holes with a shovel all day in the scorching sun, have you worked hard?

Absolutely yes you have worked hard. But have you become richer? No, not really.

Here is the concept that I found out in life: 

People don't pay you for the hard work that you do, people pay you to solve a problem.

The more complex a problem is to solve, the fewer people there are to solve it and hence those who can solve it are in higher demand and can charge more money for it. This sounds pretty obvious but it does take saying this out loud a few times for it to really sink into your mind, it did for me at least.

Not many people made that connection early on in life, hence they slave away with little pay never considering if they are adding value or not to their work.

In a 2014 Pew Research Center survey of 44 countries, 73% of Americans deemed hard work "very important" to getting ahead in life. This is probably one of the problems of measuring success in such a black and white manner.

Think of it this way:

Is a single mother working 3 different jobs, much lazier compared to a CEO of a company making phone calls all day and only has 1 job?

This brings us back to our main lesson, money comes from the value that you bring. Someone could be doing back-breaking work all day and still not be rich. The question to ask oneself would be "is this a problem only very few people can solve?" Most probably not. A CEO however could close million-dollar deals in a 5-minute conversation on the other hand.

The mantra of working hard

The mantra of hard work and you will get rich is damaging. 

Why do I say that?

Here's is why:

You work hard and you don't get rewarded or recognised so you think you need to work even harder. The cycle continues until you give up. 

• All your ideas, contributions and input remain the intellectual property of the company when you move on.
• All the late nights and early morning that you slave away at your job is often forgotten once you move on.
• The new policies and procedures that you've brought on to improve the company's process will be long forgotten and even changed by the new incoming intake that replaces you.
• The numerous clients and businesses that you bring in to generate revenue for the company will also be forgotten when you move on from the company.

You then blame yourself after working 40 plus years in a job and you have nothing to show for yourself.

What to do instead of just working hard?

1. Be clear about the value you bring to the table
2. Focus on high impact task
3. Always look for ways to solve problems
4. Be a little lucky

Be clear about the value you bring to the table

You need to be very clear about the value that you bring to the table and get real about it.

Saying that you work with high-level resource management for client-facing activities in a multinational corporation that supplies key products from producers to everyday consumers when in fact you are just a restocking staff at Walmart is not going to cut it.

There is no hate to shop staff, they are the hardest working people I know. However, this ties back to the value factor and how much you bring to the table.

Are you just another warm body in the office that does the routine tasks with little to no value in the output? This may be something worth reflecting on.

If your skills are not up to par:

• Take a course online to learn more skills.
• Take initiative and bring solutions to your work.
• Find ways to build multiple streams of income so that you are not reliant only on a single source of income.

High impact tasks

If you are like most people, chances are you probably have a whole long list of to-do list that you probably will never get to the end of doing.

Instead of trying to accomplish everything and getting stressed out when you don't, focus on the task that has the highest greatest impact for the long term.

For eg, if you have a business focus on the high impact task first such as:

• Generating leads.
• Marketing, and getting sales.

You can do lower impact task such as responding to customer emails, managing customer returns and answering FAQs later in the day that requires less high-level thinking and planning.

Look for ways to solve problems

You see this so often, in redundancy, the lower level staffs are often first to go and higher-level managers or executives are usually last to go despite the manager's salary costing much more than the lower-level staff. This is because of the value and experience that the managers bring to the table.

Going to a desert and digging many holes just so that you can say that you worked hard is not solving a problem or adding value to others. However, if you convince a company that you want an inflow of cash so that you can dig holes and plant trees in a specific area for environmental purposes, you might more likely get a company to invest in you or even provide you with grants.

It is really interesting to see the same situation with completely different outcomes.

Luck

Some people might not believe in luck. Either way, at the end of the day sometimes you need a little luck to get as far you want in life. Merely just being a genius or extremely talented will not get you anywhere if your talent is not discovered or utilised.

Hence, this means positioning yourself in the right place, at the right time to get the right opportunity.

I like the quote by one of the characters in Madmen mentions "You can't be at the right place and the right time all the time, you have to be at the right place all the time."

Conclusion

At the end of the day, this is not to say don't work hard. Hard work is important. However, the mantra that hard work in itself is all that it takes to be successful isn't entirely true. It takes so much more than just hard work to be successful. It takes guts.

Understanding the value that you bring to the table and being clear about what you can contribute from the start will help ensure you don't settle for anything less than what you are worth.

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