Working hard

I have had something incredible happen to me.

Today, while being in the airport, I have picked up a book just on a whim out of 10 books that all looked quite interesting. The book's title seemed to suggest that it would be a book on habits, and as a true believer and supporter of habits, it got me interested.

Except for being an advocate of habits, I love Atomic Habits by James Clear, and I have always heard that he was not the first to cover the topic and talk about habits.

That is why I had every reason to pick that book.

The book is called - The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy.

This was the first time I saw it, and considering that it was published back in 2010, I feel regretful for not reading it earlier.

Straight away from the first pages, it struck my nerve. I have been really in the difficult part of my life where I dropped most of my habits and still wasn’t sure whenever it was the right choice that I made.

I have been giving myself excuses, and without even knowing, I have started deteriorating towards a much worse life than I wanted to live with bad habits and overall bad decisions that I was making.

The book from the first chapter gave me an essential thing that I really needed at the moment, which was:

Work hard. Work hard until you are exhausted because no matter how you look at it, winning the lottery is not an option and if you would like to achieve success, the easiest way to do it is by working more than others to compensate for your shortcomings.

I think that this saying above is incredibly powerful because it tells you exactly how life works without trying to give you productivity porn that we are used to and turned to identify it straight away.

I have written before about relying on your talent and how dangerous and wrong it is.

Here the book goes further and says that we all have shortcomings in some areas of our lives, and working extra is the best way to compensate and become better that are more talented than us.

That is a very powerful and extremely truthful way to think about life and work.

This mental state is the one that can make sure that we are not too easy on ourselves and instead can focus on really extremely important things that do matter instead of resting and talking about burnout so much.

I mean, I do believe in burnout, but I feel that just being sensible about work and really working hard when you work is what can be done with no dangers to health or to your long term well being.

Tenacity and determination are what exactly makes people differ from average to great.

Read the book. I believe it is on par with Atomic Habits and can change your life.

I as well will keep on reading and will update you whenever I find something of interest again!

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Klim Y