Working hard will not make you rich.
I know it’s not like we grew up. We have heard the opposite.
- Put in hours.
- Work everyone.
- Grind now, get paid later.
- Do this long enough and the money will appear.
It doesn’t work like that, but… At least not the way we promised.
But that doesn’t have to be a bad thing.
Even if you don’t get rich by working hard, hard work will give you something else.
Many people overlook one thing because they are busy waiting for the salary. And it is worth more than money.
Mirror
A while ago I hung a window in our house.
It doesn’t look like anything. It was nothing to me. I spent more time measuring than drilling. I worked out the exact height. I checked the space between the edge of the mirror and the edge of the wall. I thought about who was standing in front of him, in which corner.
I then marked the two screw holes and made sure they lined up perfectly. Drilled. Hang up. Everything took longer than it should have.
I stepped back and looked at him.
I put as much effort into hanging that window as I did writing the article.
And then I felt better.
Good is not rich. Not well rewarded. There was a quiet sense of satisfaction because I had done the little thing right instead of rushing it.
No one paid me for this mirror.
We have combined two things that do not belong together
Something clicked in that window.
As a society, we have conflated two ideas: work hard and get rich. We talk about them in the same breath. We assume that one leads directly to the other.
It’s not like that.
Hard work is a way of life. This is not some get rich strategy.
It’s about doing your best no matter what’s in front of you, getting the most out of yourself, and refusing to delegate sloppy work. That’s why we work hard.
Money is a separate question. And the honest answer to this question is uncomfortable.
Look who will actually be rich. Most of the wealth is not earned, it is inherited. Initial capital issues. Time, the family you were born into, and the people you know are the same.
There’s action in there somewhere, but it’s nowhere near the whole story. I wrote about it before luck and hard workand the part no one likes to hear is simple. You can work yourself to the bone and still not get rich.
So, if that’s the only reason you’re working hard, you’ve signed a deal that doesn’t get paid most of the time.
How hard work pays off
Here’s what hard work gets you.
It will give you satisfaction. With confidence. In self-esteem.
When you do a good job, you feel good. You have a little more confidence in yourself. You prove brick by brick that you are a person who gets things done right.
Psychologists have studied this. The more effort you put into something, the more you appreciate the result.
One version of it is called The IKEA effect. People value swing furniture that they assemble much more than the same thing that is bought. Labor itself creates the surplus. And it only works when you’re done.
This payment: Meaning.
Marcus Aurelius ruled the Roman Empire and, like the rest of us, had to drag himself out of bed. He wrote a note to himself about this.
“In the morning, when it’s hard to get out of bed, tell yourself: I have to go to work as a person.”
Not to get rich. Not to win. Working as a human being. He saw effort as a natural thing that is built into us and satisfies its own conditions.
Ants do their job. Birds do their job. Making yourself better is not a transaction. It’s just what a person is for.
How to work hard for the right cause
If you stop looking at hard work as a money machine, it will get better, not worse. Here’s how to make the shift.
- Remove the board from the work. Don’t judge a day by what it earns. Evaluate your work by doing it right. Money is a backward, noisy number. The quality of your actions is something you control today.
- Do the little things right. Hang the window correctly. Write a boring email well. Finish what you started. The standard you apply to small things is the standard you apply to big things.
- Aim your movement. Hard work without purpose is just fatigue. Direct it real skillsomething you can be measurably better at. Combinations of motion and direction. A single act will burn you.
- Build wealth as your own project. If you want money, go after it directly and deliberately. Spend less than you earn. Save. Invest. Their own things. Don’t expect raw effort to turn itself into wealth. It won’t happen.
Do this and hard work will stop being a bet you can lose. When you do this, it becomes something that pays you.
Work hard because it makes you who you are
I still work hard. I probably work more now than I ever thought it would make me rich.
The difference is what I expect from it. I don’t wait for a good job to put money in my account. I expect it to become someone who respects me. This return is guaranteed. The money was never there.
So build wealth deliberately and as a separate plan. But work hard because it makes you who you are.
Do the right thing in front of you. Then do the next one.
