Hi, I'm Gregory Brown.
My goal is to help software developers get better at what they do, whether they've been at it for five weeks or fifty years.
(he/him)
Hard work may be a precondition for success but that does not mean that hard work on its own is likely to lead to success. In fact, hard work on the wrong things is as big of a source of failure (and a much more painful and costly form) than not putting enough effort it.
Generally speaking, you can expect to put the most effort in when you're trying to grow. It doesn't have to happen all at once, so you can freely pace yourself based on what makes sense for your life. The more ambitious your goals are, the more valuable it is to be patient and take your time, if you can afford to do so.
When you are experiencing the need to work extra hard just to sustain something, and it isn't helping you grow, or it is burning you out, this is a sign you are doing the wrong kind of hard work. Sometimes it is very hard to recognize this situation in the moment, and pride can easily lead you to start treating working hard as a success metric of its own (which it is not), or assuming that your failures are due to not working hard enough (usually not the case when you already feel strained)
Perhaps ironically, the best way to tell the difference between unproductive and productive hard work is to frequently take time off, on a daily, weekly, monthly, and annual basis.
Whenever you pause your efforts, it gives you a chance to remember what your end goals are, and to honestly ask yourself "is more of this kind of effort really going to get me there?" -- a question which is very hard to answer while caught up in the thick of things.
Finally, life changes constantly, but unless we are very intentional about it we don't necessarily update our working habits to match changes in our life until we experience severe pain of some form or another. A level of effort that feels totally sustainable when the rest of life is smooth sailing can be treacherous when the storms of "life stuff that isn't work" roll in.
You won't ever get this stuff right 100% of the time. But with experience, it gets easier to make smart choices around how much work is enough.
Hard work may be a precondition for success but that does not mean that hard work on its own is likely to lead to success. In fact, hard work on the wrong things is as big of a source of failure (and a much more painful and costly form) than not putting enough effort it.
Generally speaking, you can expect to put the most effort in when you're trying to grow. It doesn't have to happen all at once, so you can freely pace yourself based on what makes sense for your life. The more ambitious your goals are, the more valuable it is to be patient and take your time, if you can afford to do so.
When you are experiencing the need to work extra hard just to sustain something, and it isn't helping you grow, or it is burning you out, this is a sign you are doing the wrong kind of hard work. Sometimes it is very hard to recognize this situation in the moment, and pride can easily lead you to start treating working hard as a success metric of its own (which it is not), or assuming that your failures are due to not working hard enough (usually not the case when you already feel strained)
Perhaps ironically, the best way to tell the difference between unproductive and productive hard work is to frequently take time off, on a daily, weekly, monthly, and annual basis.
Whenever you pause your efforts, it gives you a chance to remember what your end goals are, and to honestly ask yourself "is more of this kind of effort really going to get me there?" -- a question which is very hard to answer while caught up in the thick of things.
Finally, life changes constantly, but unless we are very intentional about it we don't necessarily update our working habits to match changes in our life until we experience severe pain of some form or another. A level of effort that feels totally sustainable when the rest of life is smooth sailing can be treacherous when the storms of "life stuff that isn't work" roll in.
You won't ever get this stuff right 100% of the time. But with experience, it gets easier to make smart choices around how much work is enough.
Thanks for your invaluable opinion. I am going to follow this.