Hard Work or Impatience?

Work ethic and people’s notions of what hard work or being a hard worker are, is something that I find interesting to think about from time to time.  I’m not even sure of what hard work means to me anymore.

This past week I have written about and made a video on the idea of slowing down intensity of effort in order to accelerate the process of reaching goals.  As I write this I’m coming to the realization that maybe I don’t care about hard work anymore.  What do I care about?  RESULTS!

In the last ten years there have been many times where I was accused of not working hard enough on promoting my content online.  “Travis you gotta be on all the social media platforms!  It’s just the way it is now!”  Several times I have allowed myself to buy into that ideology and the result has always been burnout and no more readership/viewership than I had before.  I’m 1 year deep with my current youtube channel and while I’m still tweaking things to find the right pace, I’m more committed than ever to keep going.  

Same thing with writing.  I’ve gotten a book written and published on Amazon and now I’m back to regular blogging.  I had stopped blogging for a while to focus on the Book and YouTube, but I’m back to it and loving the process.  I’m also still tweaking my pace with writing as I want to start work on a second book about personal finance… and then a third book on fitness after that.  And a 4th and a 5th…

If we work hard at anything, maybe it’s finding the pace that produces long term consistency in any particular process in order to get the results we’re looking for.  As I say in my book, any significant goal will require significant time to achieve.  Picking the right pace of effort for ourselves is incredibly important.  

I’ll say this a million more times in a million different ways after today:  I’ve known lots of people that wanted to start an exercise program, budgeting, a blog, or a business, or some other endeavor.  People are impatient about results so they feel a high intensity of effort in the short term will accelerate their progress… and they burn a bright hot flame for a few weeks or a few months before they crash and burn.  

Of course, it’s okay to burn out.  That’s called a ‘mistake’ or a ‘failed attempt’.  The question is, do we recognize impatience disguised as working hard?