Mistake Monday - I overvalued hard work

Hard work is a good thing. My mistake was making it the most important thing. Often, instead of solving important problems and creating value for customers, I delivered very long and lifeless lists of completed tasks. 

Early in my career at Microsoft, I did some silly stuff in the name of hard work:

• Competed with my boss to be the first (out of hundreds) car into the parking lot each day
• Frequently worked past 1:00 AM, got up by 5:30 AM to do it again, and boasted to co-workers about how little sleep I needed (Full disclosure: I still pull these nights when I need to for clients, but it's the exception vs. the rule)

Don't think hard work can be a mistake? Here are two other business leaders' takes:

1. In his new book Linchpin, Seth Godin describes what used to matter at work vs. what matters now:

• The old American Dream: Keep your head down, Follow instructions, Show up on time, Work hard, Suck it up
• The new American Dream: Be remarkable, Be generous, Create art, Make judgment calls, Connect people and ideas

2. David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of Ruby on Rails and partner at 37signals, shared the following (and much more) about start-up business success for Stanford's Entrepreneurial Thought Leadership series:

• It's a myth that you have to work long hours to start a business. Hansson and a couple of designers developed Basecamp (37signals flagship app) by spending 10 hours a week for 6 months while in school. "None of this 80 hours a week bullshit."
• If you boast about getting 4 hours of sleep, you might as well boast about how bad your work is going to suck the next day.

Hard work is a good thing, but not the best thing. I've become happier and more effective since realizing this.

Comments

[Jeremy Carter]

Great point. The quality of our work the next day usually always suffers when we try to be the late night hero. Loving Linchpin, too. A bit redundant, but great content.

[Kevin Mackey]

Thanks Jeremy! We'll have to compare notes when we're both done with Linchpin. I'm half-way through, and so far it seems to read more like a collection of blog posts than a book, which makes it harder for me to retain everything.