Seppo Helava’s post is spot on in examining the tension between tolerating difficult working environments and overdelivering.
One of the harder years of my life was 2009, when I worked most if not all weekends, and I think Labor Day was the first holiday that year that I wasn’t in the office. And yet I look back on that time fondly as I was delivering quality work with a great team under impossible conditions. And that year set up the rest of my career in that I built the relationships with the Ads VPs that later hired me as Chief of Staff, which later springboarded me into coaching.
Sometimes it’s worth choosing that sort of intensity. Doing hard things that others won’t or can’t is what will differentiate you in your career.
Other times it’s not. 2011 was a similarly hard year of work for me, but I feel no nostalgia for it, as I didn’t feel I was doing valuable work, and I ended up burning out badly.
So how do you tell whether something is the right kind of hard that is worth pushing through to set yourself apart, instead of the kind of hard that grinds you into dust?
I think it comes down to choosing the work freely – do I want to do this work for me? If I’m doing it solely to satisfy the expectations of others, it will be soul crushing. If I can find meaning or purpose in the work for myself, it can be invigorating and even energizing.
What kind of hard are you choosing these days?
#youhaveachoice #career #personalgrowth