Don’t work hard, work deep.
Hard work, as in working silly long hours, not allowing ourselves any break, driving ourselves relentlessly to get stuff done and to be seen by others as hard-working is not hard work it is ego-driven behaviour to match a story we are telling ourselves and self-image we want the world to see.
Anything of real value in life requires commitment, dedication and sacrifice of easy and shallow things, however, it is deep work that matters not hard work.
We can achieve work of the highest value that matters to us and others by committing to a few hours of deep work each day rather than this false notion of hard work. If we work deeply, and in a focused state for a few hours, we then have the rest of our time to focus on the other things in life. The stuff that really matters…like doing the things we truly love to do and spending time with the people who deeply matter to us.
Hard work that is all-consuming damages our mental and physical health, It prohibits us from doing the things that really matter, and as we all have a finite amount of concentration to be able to do high-value quality work what happens is if we work too long the quality of our work deteriorates and then creates even more work to fix the mistakes.
Doing less is more when we work deeply. The deeper we work, the less we need to work because the value of what we produce is significantly higher than hard work. It is deep work, not hard work that matters.
Philip Dodson 