I posted about Seth Godin last week and over the weekend about the decision I am trying to make. I think Seth’s post really converges everything I have been working out in my head:
The future is not about time at all. The future is about work that’s really and truly hard, not time-consuming. It’s about the kind of work that requires us to push ourselves, not just punch the clock. Hard work is where our job security, our financial profit, and our future joy lie.
It’s hard work to make difficult emotional decisions, such as quitting a job and setting out on your own. It’s hard work to invent a new system, service, or process that’s remarkable. It’s hard work to tell your boss that he’s being intellectually and emotionally lazy. It’s easier to stand by and watch the company fade into oblivion. It’s hard work to tell senior management to abandon something that it has been doing for a long time in favor of a new and apparently risky alternative. It’s hard work to make good decisions with less than all of the data.
Hard work is about risk. It begins when you deal with the things that you’d rather not deal with: fear of failure, fear of standing out, fear of rejection. Hard work is about training yourself to leap over this barrier, tunnel under that barrier, drive through the other barrier. And, after you’ve done that, to do it again the next day.
If you haven’t read it yet, you really should. The things that have been making this difficult for me: fear, stubbornness, ego, even a tinge of reverence for the status-quo, don’t stand up to his spotlight. That’s the thing–we put up all sorts of delusions and exceptions and “but for me it’s different” instead of just manning up and doing what we need to do. Godin and Ferriss too, are saying that HOURS are meaningless. What matters is results and balls. And that clears a little up for me.
