The harder part of the hardwork

I’m not in danger from the 10,000 moves that you have practiced once… I’m in danger from that one move that you have practiced 10,000 times” 

 –  A Dialogue from the movie “Chandni Chowk to China”

That is the power of hard work. But in day-to-day life, hard work lacks pride. It is the most under rated quality. It is old-fashioned. If a fresher writes in his resume about his “hard working” nature, it looks mediocre. He should talk about how smart he is. 

Unknowingly we always promote smart work. It is not that we never value hard work but somehow we take it for granted. The more and more we talk about smart work, hard work looses its shine. It goes on the back foot. New comers (who don’t read much), never even notice the ‘hard work’. They simply ‘browse’ around and see that smart work pays. It gives quick wins. It is appreciated. They train their mind for smart work, thinking that it is the only way. Unfortunately they don’t realize that, 

No outstanding achievement in this world is without the hard work. 

The world wants smart working people but unfortunately that does not mean that they don’t want hard working people.

Gradually when you take something for granted for years, don’t even talk about it, don’t show it with pride, subconsciously, we start forgetting about it. We only think smart work is the way to go. 

In becoming smarter and smarter, we start becoming over-smart.

Let us look at the psychology that feeds this. Smart work is fashionable because it gives you quick wins. It gives you instant gratification. But it only makes you win battles, not the WAR. 

WAR is won by HARD work & SMART work together. Definitely not by SMART work alone.

We should definitely value smart work smart but not so much that you discourage the hard work and make people ‘hardly’ work. 

In fact according to me, the real smart work is to ‘soft’en the hard work. Make the hard work, easy.

Make hard work ingrained in yourself, your corporate, your society, so much so that it keeps you going. Always. Then you work SMART in whatever you do without getting tired. 

Any individual or a corporate or a society who achieves this enjoy a substantial competitive advantage over many others. Look at Japan. Japan is all about hard work. Everyone there works hard. This is what is commonly called as Culture, which is very difficult to copy.

The only way to make hard work, easy, is to glamorize it. 

The real problem with hard work is not the hard work itself but the lack of appreciation to it, more importantly the lack of glory to it. 

Start appreciating hard working people around you. Start appreciating you as well for your hard work. This does not mean you stop appreciating smart work. Appreciate both but realize that when you appreciate smart work, you appreciate the outcome, when you appreciate the hard work, you appreciate the attempt.

In a way, you accept the failures. You remove the fear of failures from the society.

It is a subtle change but goes pretty deep.