{"id":3312,"date":"2024-01-17T14:15:37","date_gmt":"2024-01-17T14:15:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nehrlich.com\/linkedin\/uncategorized\/hard-work-is-not-enough\/"},"modified":"2026-03-12T21:29:49","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T21:29:49","slug":"hard-work-is-not-enough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nehrlich.com\/linkedin\/uncategorized\/hard-work-is-not-enough\/","title":{"rendered":"Hard work is not enough.<\/a>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hard work is not enough. <\/p>\n

I used to believe that if I worked hard and produced good results, then success would find me. That’s the way it worked in school because the teacher was evaluating my homework. That’s the way it worked in my first job because my manager was reviewing my work and keeping tabs on the progress I was making. <\/p>\n

However, as I progressed in my career, working hard was no longer enough. Sometimes my manager was too busy to pay attention to what I was doing. Sometimes I wasn’t aligned with my manager, so they would dismiss the work that I thought was important. Sometimes I was working ineffectively; working harder actually got me further behind. <\/p>\n

I am still unlearning this pernicious idea that effort translates into results. Nobody cares about my effort except me. What other people want are results that help them. How I get those results is irrelevant. <\/p>\n

A recent example: I was trying to figure out when I would work on marketing my book. I have a few ideas that I want to try, but couldn’t find the time among my other commitments. My wife asked “Why don’t you hire a college intern to run those experiments?” Seems obvious, right? But I was focused on me doing the work, rather than on how I might get the work done. <\/p>\n

Is there an area of your life where you are not getting the results you want? What would change if you focused on just getting the #results, rather than on the #effort and #hardwork you put in? <\/p>\n

P.S. If you know somebody who might be interested in being my marketing intern, please connect me!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hard work is not enough. I used to believe that if I worked hard and produced good results, then success would find me. That’s the way it worked in school because the teacher was evaluating my homework. That’s the way it worked in my first job because my manager was reviewing my work and keeping…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nehrlich.com\/linkedin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nehrlich.com\/linkedin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nehrlich.com\/linkedin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nehrlich.com\/linkedin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nehrlich.com\/linkedin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3312"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nehrlich.com\/linkedin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4428,"href":"https:\/\/nehrlich.com\/linkedin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3312\/revisions\/4428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nehrlich.com\/linkedin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nehrlich.com\/linkedin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nehrlich.com\/linkedin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}