James Clear Quote on Hard Work and How Not All Hard Work Is Created Equally

“Success is never due to one thing, but failure can be.  Sleeping well won’t make you successful, but not sleeping enough will hold you back. Hard work is rarely enough without good strategy, but even the best strategy is useless without hard work.  Many things are necessary, but not sufficient for success.”

James Clear, Blog

Beyond the Quote (347/365)

Not all hard work is created equally. For some, specific kinds of “hard work” aligns with strengths, aptitudes, potentials, and interests. For others, that same “hard work” might call upon weaknesses. Even if the “hard work” that was tasked was the same, it wouldn’t have the same net result on the individual. It would cause a drastic difference in the amount of time, energy, and effort required. And if you want to optimize your time, energy, and effort in your life—then you should start by optimizing the type of “hard work” that you choose to do for this very reason.

The first variable that will greatly affect your ability to complete hard work is competence. Writing a research paper, for the most part, is hard for everybody. This task is easier, however, for those who know how to research, how to properly annotate, how to write clearly and concisely, how to prioritize tasks, how to block out distractions, and how to structure a grammatically correct paper. The person who doesn’t know how to do those things—isn’t competent in those areas of understanding—will have an understandably harder time.

The second variable is resistance. Resistance becomes evident when you think about the feelings you have towards different kinds of “hard work.” We tend to like doing that which we’re good at (or can see ourselves being good at)—even if it’s hard work—and we tend to dislike doing stuff that we’re bad at (or can’t see ourselves being good at). This layer of added mental resistance can make “hard work” twice as hard as it might be for someone else. Have you ever been forced to do hard work that you didn’t want to do? Then I’m sure you can relate. Resistance is real and it can be paralyzingly strong.

An easy example would be the physically gifted versus the mentally gifted. Generally speaking, the physically gifted person has an easier time doing the physically hard work—hitting hard workouts, competing in sporting events, challenging themselves to do physically demanding feats. And the same is true for the mentally gifted person—solving hard puzzles, answering interesting questions, challenging themselves to do mentally demanding feats—all comes easier. Ask a physically gifted person to do mentally hard work and it will be doubly hard. Hard because it’s hard work and hard because it isn’t in alignment with their strengths. Ask a mentally gifted person to do physically hard work and the same will be true.

Of course, mental strengths and physical strengths are not mutually exclusive. We can have (and most of us do have) a mix of both. The key lesson from this idea is that you seek to find, understand, and internalize what your strengths and weaknesses are! If you attack tasks blindly—without any understanding, forethought, or strategy—then you might very well be wasting your time, energy, and effort. But, once you do have them figured out, in addition to what’s mentioned above, here are some additional guidelines to follow:

1) Triple down on your strengths: If getting a specific type of “hard work” done is easier for you than it might be for others, treat that as a sign. A sign that gives you an incredible opportunity to get ahead/ build valuable skills/ stand out from the crowd. If doing the hard work of lifting heavy weights comes naturally to you, triple down on it! If doing the hard work of writing articles comes naturally to you, triple down on it! But for the writer who doesn’t feel a pull or have an aptitude to lift heavy weights, trying to triple down on it wouldn’t yield the same results as it would for someone who does. And the resistance that they would need to overcome would be too great to keep up with those who have to overcome less.

2) Don’t forget about your weaknesses: Just because you might have an aptitude to lift heavy weights doesn’t mean that it’s all you should do! You still need to balance out your life in order to become the highest performer you can be. Heavy lifters should still stretch—even if they’re not naturally flexible. They should still read—even if they’re allergic to books. They should still work to solve interesting problems—even if they’re no good at Sudoku. It’s balance—body, mind, and spiritual balance—that will always lead to the most overall fulfilling lives.

3) Some hard work should be done by everyone: Regardless of your aptitudes, potential, and interest in the following tasks—no matter how hard they may be for you to do—should still be done by everyone. Exercise—regardless of how smart you are. Reading—regardless of how fit you are. Writing—regardless of how unnatural it might feel. Connecting—regardless of how comfortable you are in your introversion. Recharging—regardless of how energetic, busy-minded, and good at “multi-tasking” that you think you might be. These, to me, are necessities. If they aren’t done, like how Clear mentioned sleep above, they will hold you back.

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