Why Hard Work Doesn’t Always Pay-Off
Unfortunately, hard work doesn’t always pay-off. Furthermore, when hard work doesn’t pay-off the solution is not to work harder.
The reality is that if you genuinely worked your hardest, but the results didn’t follow, it could only mean one of two things.
- You did the wrong thing the right way.
- You did the right thing the right way, but you didn’t do it long enough
If you worked your hardest at doing the wrong thing, then working harder will only make it worse. Therefore, the first thing you must always do when hard work doesn’t pay off is to get an expert coach to use his or her experience to guide you towards doing the right thing the right way.
On the other hand, if you are doing the right thing the right way, you must be able to recognize that you are in a situation where a microwave approach won’t work. Some things require a slow cooker for the best results. Overworking yourself in the short-term may be sabotaging your long-term results.
Often, no matter how hard you work you can’t circumvent the 10,000-hour rule of thumb. Moreover, if you burn out before you reach that threshold all that hard work in the short-term will go to waste. This is the classic case where the turtle beats the hare. Again, finding an expert coach to help you identify this problem and develop the proper course correction is always the best option.