This is going to spark some controversy
I wasn’t sure if I should publish this post or not.
Kept it in the freezer for a few days, but in the end, only a few people will see it at best, so why bother? So here it is.
The claim of this article is that what you have been taught. What you learned since early days. “Work hard to succeed” is just not true in its essence.
Moreover it states that:
- the harder you try, the less you accomplish
- the more focus you put, the more opportunity is avoiding you
- the tenser the muscles, the worse the aim
You are not a robot, but a biological organism. Every action sparks a reaction. Wounds heal into scars, which creates spots of harder, tougher “new skin”.
Putting yourself under stress for trying too hard… changes your brain. Scarifies it, makes it look for new ways to avoid another “tense” situation like this.
You are gradually getting worse and worse at trying to force yourself into “working harder”.
Climbing up the burnout hill, here we go!
Wealthy people are usually very easy on themselves, why?
It always amazed me, I rarely meet millionaires who are very disciplined or harsh on themselves. They don’t work 12-hour day shifts to get better at what they do. They seem to actually waste a lot of time!
They like to claim and tell stories of working for 80+ hours a week to “get there”. And this is true in many cases, but also as soon as they started “getting there”, they notice that success does not rely so heavily on their hard work anymore, and they balance it out where possible.
Most of them, the rest are just workaholics.
Should their fortunes degrade quickly as a penalty for distraction? Of course no, the opposite happens. Rich are getting richer, even having a very relaxed lifestyle. Why?
The urge to find that “niche”
As you are here and now, all by yourself. With nothing significant achieved so far? Probably wondering from time to time “How to succeed in life? What should I do?’.
100s of thoughts and ideas are crossing your mind, one business idea better than the other. You feel the growing pressure of finding something truly valuable… But years go by, and we are in a quite similar spot to where we’ve been, correct?
Didn’t your past yourself dreamed about similar things you do now?
It seems like all niches are taken, all products invented, all services very competitive and already there on the market with thousands of great reviews.
All of them had starting or growth conditions good enough to survive till now.
On top of that, you are aware of another 90% of businesses that failed on the same path as the successful ones and are not existing anymore.
The more technology there is, the less it pays off to work hard
Anything you do manually can be automated, even your creative process with the recent development of generative AI systems.
So basically anything you do (except taking basic care of yourself and your home) is a form of inefficiency in comparison to what’s possible.. and the difference is huge!
Ok, maybe you have managed to escape it for some time by either: being the first in a new market, or creating a local market that is based on human interaction and therefore not easy to harvest with automation.
20 years ago, local family-owned grocery shops in Poland were the typical place, people would do shopping. 10 years ago, they almost disappeared being replaced by big chains of supermarkets with efficient logistics and bargaining power above the suppliers. Now, local corner shops are back but franchised. Complex IT&logicstical systems make them get just enough, just on time, with the lowest cost possible.
20 years ago, a local photographer would go to every school in his district once a year, to make group and individual photos of kids. To this day, this is a viable business. For how long? When would we have such quality and abundance of personal photos on our mobile phones, to never need a photographer again? Maybe it already happened, and we are just waiting for this industry to slowly (or quickly) fade off?
The best opportunities are low-hanging fruits
* limited in time
In business, rules are simple. First come, first served. Things are moving, and they are moving faster every year.
The only low-hanging fruits are the new needs we uncover in ourselves with the market changes. The low-hanging fruit in marketing was TikTok in 2022, the low-hanging fruit in software was mobile apps in 20’s.
The low-hanging fruit might be a business that is totally not related to the Internet era, like becoming a plumber or an electrician, if there is a shortage in your area. You would be surprised how high the daily rate people would pay to not have to do physical work by themselves! You may say “not scalable”, but the real question is “what % savings rate can you achieve with it? How quickly it will let you escape the rat race and constant worry?”
It is still difficult to create an emotional connection on a mass scale
The service business is people business. You may not love it, but people would prefer you over a stranger 9 times out of 10. It is a low-hanging fruit. Make connections, listen to people, hear their stories, see what they need, and think about how you can actually help them.
Hard work blocks your flow
While you could be living out there, living a life, creating meaningful connections, you decided to “suck it up” and commit to 3 hours a day of consistent hard work towards the goal.
All the people who “made it” through their work went through this phase, so it shows as a clear path for you to go forward.
But the problem is, you don’t really know if there were not any external, deciding factors to their success like: intelligence, luck or connections or wealth.
Find your flow, not your job
You can become a self-made success person through hard work.. it is just odds are against you unless.. You really feel the flow. You really feel that this particular thing you are doing is inline with your natural talents, makes you happy, makes you energised.
Sometimes experiencing pain makes you feel alive, then welcome into the professional athlete category.
Sometimes solving a big puzzle makes you feel engaged more than a normal person would, then welcome to engineering or research field!
Sometimes attention of other people is that thing that drives you. Yes, social media accounts will feel natural.
This is the only truly creative mindset that could be cast into a big advantage.
Anything else? Consider letting go. Try to look into yourself and look for some answers… ‘if it is not my flow, then where thise desire came from? who importet it in me, now causing suffering?’
100 jobs path
Many successful people share their stories of looking for “their thing” in life, working multiple different jobs: waithers, tiger feeders at zoo, teachers, actors. Jobs from different spectrum. Jobs not specialised.
Only AFTER experiencing what it is like to live this or that life, they found their true calling.
So how you can find yours by just watching a youtube video?
Personally, I am part software-engineer, part behavioral psychology enthusiast, part entrepreneur with experience bootstraping 7-figure businesses. I've spent most of my life programming computers and running IT projects, but the biggest challenges I found were in understanding the nature of human behavior and its triggers.