I'll be working over the long holiday. In fact, if I'm conscious, I'm working. You could argue, "I work weekends and pull all-nighters. I’m the first to come in and the last to leave. My phone is always on, I’m always connected with a BlackBerry, iPhone…” or whatever other gadget. Sorry. Even if you're a workaholic, you're not working very hard at all. Sure, you're working long, but "long" and "hard" are now two different things. This is what hard work is:
It's hard work to make difficult emotional decisions, such as quitting a job and setting out on your own.
It's hard work create a new system, service, or process that's mind-blowing.
It's hard work to tell your boss he's being intellectually and emotionally lazy.
It's hard work to tell senior management to abandon something you know isn’t going anywhere
It's hard work to make good decisions with less than all of the information required
Today, working hard is about taking apparent risk. Not a crazy risk. An apparent risk is something the competition (and your coworkers) believe is unsafe but that you realize is far more conservative than sticking with the common opinion.
Richard Branson doesn't work more hours than you do. Neither does Bill Gates or Jack Welch. None of the people who are racking up amazing success stories and creating brilliant items are doing it just by working more hours than you are. And I hate to say it, but they're not smarter than you either. They're succeeding by doing hard work.
There are a precious intelligent few who are realizing that this temporary recession is the best opportunity they've ever had. They're working harder than ever -- mentally -- and taking all sorts of emotional and personal risks that are bound to pay off. Hard work is about risk.
It begins when you deal with the things that you'd rather not deal with: fear of failure, fear of standing out, fear of rejection. Hard work is about training yourself to jump over this hurdle, find your way out in the dark, bulldoze through obstacles. And, after you've done this, to do it again the next day.
Look, the riskier you hard work appears to be, the safer it really is. It's the people having difficult conversations, inventing remarkable products, and pushing the envelope who are building a recession-proof future for themselves.
5 comments:
I would like to quote your statement : "hardwork is about training yourself to jump over this hardle, find your way out in the dark, bulldoze through obstacles.And, after you've done this, to do it again the next day."
could i take it and put into my 'hardwork dictionary'? :)
Ladies and gentlemen,
This is a famous quote from ernie chen and please take note from this :)
For me it’s not about working long hours but the effort you put in to know more. No matter how long you work, it does not mean a hard work yet until the result is out. You have to work hard before you can achieve anything and putting long hours is just one part of it.
Each of us has "Triple 8-hour" per day. 8 hours are dedicated to work, 8 hours are meant for rest and the final 8 hours are our resorts which determine how successful we are in life.
"What you do off the job is the determining factor in how far you will go on the job" ~ Zig Ziglar
Every famous person has a catch phrase, so does Ernie. The first time I heard it I was skeptical but in the end "If you can't beat them, join them" and now everyday I find myself more satisfied with myself as I know that I did try my best and push myself to the limits. Thank you Ernie!
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