As
entrepreneurs working hard is a given (if you want to be successful
that is). Of course, there’s always a question of just what truly is
working hard. I’ve found that most entrepreneurs, if compared to the
average office worker at a big company, work
extremely hard. However, just because you’re working harder than your buddy at some Dundler Mifflin
clone doesn’t mean that you’re actually working hard. Instead, you
need to be comparing yourself to some of the hardest working people on
the planet
To help with that, I’ve assembled some inspirational stories of
hard-working entrepreneurs with some non-business folks mixed in for
good measure. Two caveats. First, hard work is completely irrelevant
is you’re not working smart and being productive. Second, hard work is
also counter-productive if you’re sacrificing your health to an extreme
degree and if the increase in quantity of hours worked is leading to a
decrease in your creativity (often the case!). With that being said,
here’s some stories of people who’ve worked about as hard as a human
being can.
Jeff Immelt – A few years back I read a story about Jeff entitled The Bionic Manager which reset my thinking about what hard work is. Here are a couple of passages from it:
Immelt, 49, says he’s been working 100 hours a week for
24 years. That does not take him back to his 1978 graduation from
Dartmouth, where he was football team captain (as offensive tackle) and a
fraternity president who liked to party….Most hard-charging types have
put in a 100-hour week or two. But month after month, year after year—is
that even possible? Let’s do the math. If you worked from 7 a.m. to 9
p.m. seven days a week, you’d still be two hours short of 100 hours. If
Immelt has been working that hard for 24 years, then he has already done
60 years’ worth of 40-hour weeks.
Here he is on a recent swing through San Francisco: The
first meeting is with institutional investors at 7 a.m. Then he
addresses some 200 retail investors at 8:30, standing comfortably for 25
minutes with his left hand in his pocket and his right hand holding his
PowerPoint remote; after his talk, he answers questions for an hour.
Then it’s more institutional investors, followed by GE salespeople in
Burlingame, a presentation to customers, and finally a big reception for
customers and top salespeople. He seems as energetic at the end of the
day as at the beginning. He had run virtually the same routine in Los
Angeles the day before.
Mark Cuban – Cuban has written some posts on his most excellent blog on the subject of hard work and loving what you do. Here is one of my favorite excerpts:
The edge is getting so jazzed about what you do, you just
spent 24 hours straight working on a project and you thought it was a
couple hours. The edge is knowing that you have to be the smartest guy
in the room when you have your meeting and you are going to put in the
effort to learn whatever you need to learn to get there. The edge is
knowing is knowing that when the 4 girlfriends you have had in the last
couple years asked you which was more important, them or your business,
you gave the right answer…The edge is knowing how to blow off steam a
couple times a week, just so you can refocus on business…The edge is
recognizing when you are wrong, and working harder to make sure it
doesn’t happen again. (from The Sport of Business)
Steve Pavlina and
Seth Godin –
These guys have written millions of words in their relatively young
careers, authored books, spoken at conferences and started companies
largely as one-man shows. They do more in a year than most people do in
a lifetime and are well worth learning from!
Steve sums up his philosophy towards hard work pretty well in the aptly titled post “Hard Work“:
Hard work pays off. When someone tells you otherwise,
beware the sales pitch for something “fast and easy” that’s about to
come next. The greater your capacity for hard work, the more rewards
fall within your grasp. The deeper you can dig, the more treasure you
can potentially find…Your life will reach a whole new level when you
stop avoiding and fearing hard work and simply surrender to it. Make it
your ally instead of your enemy. It’s a potent tool to have on your
side.
Seth has a similar post entitled “Labor Day“:
Your great-grandfather knew what it meant to work hard.
He hauled hay all day long, making sure that the cows got fed. In Fast
Food Nation, Eric Schlosser writes about a worker who ruptured his
vertebrae, wrecked his hands, burned his lungs, and was eventually hit
by a train as part of his 15-year career at a slaughterhouse. Now that’s
hard work…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.
Eminem and
Kanye West – These guys have legendary work ethics. Witness:
It is a little-known fact that the only book Eminem read
as a child was the dictionary. He pored over it, searching for words
that rhymed with each other that could later be pulled out of the bag
during the freestyle rap “battles” that provided his education in
hip-hop. The years spent studying the English language lie at the core
of his technical brilliance. They turned him into the greatest rapper of
his time. But they did so at a personal cost: for Eminem could be
uncharitably described as an anorak. His life starts and ends with
music. He writes constantly, scrawling lines on sheets of notepaper in a
crabby handwriting. When he’s not composing new verse, or messing
around in a studio, he’ll be listening to hip-hop. “The guy’s a studio
rat,” says producer Terry Simaan, the owner of Oh Trey 9, one of the
Detroit’s most influential hip-hop labels. “If he feels like it, he’ll
spend 12, 15 hours a day in a studio.” (From Eminem: The fall and rise of a superstar)
But West initially had trouble convincing Roc-A-Fella
execs to let him make his own album as a rapper. He was able to change
their minds only after the accident that inspired his breakthrough
single, Through the Wire. Exhausted from working around the clock, West
fell asleep behind the wheel of his Lexus and got into a crash that
nearly killed him. He was back in the studio three weeks later,
recording that hit song with his broken jaw wired shut. (From Genius Is As Genius Does)
(Note to self…take a cab or have someone else drive you if you’re working your tail off!!)
Kobe Bryant and
Tiger Woods – While
these guys haven’t exactly been choir boys the last few years they’ve
definitely worked their tail off to get to where they are. Here are
some of my favorite articles about them:
Commuting to Staples Center with Kobe Bryant
Kobe’s well-honed killer instinct
It’s 1995, and Bryant is the senior leader of the Lower
Merion team, obsessed with winning a state championship. He comes to the
gym at 5 a.m. to work out before school, stays until 7 p.m. afterward.
It’s all part of the plan. When the Aces lost in the playoffs the
previous spring, Bryant stood in the locker room, interrupting the
seniors as they hugged each other, and all but guaranteed a title,
adding, “The work starts now.”
(Don’t miss Spike Lee’s documentary about Kobe either!)
Tiger vs Phil Part Two: Work ethic.
I refuse to let anyone outwork me. That’s the reason I
log so much time on the practice range. Besides, hard work is the only
way to maintain a competitive edge, and I enjoy the process. The key,
though, is to practice with a purpose.
Tiger’s Daily Routine and Workout Regimen
The Beatles – Gladwell made their Hamburg-era work ethic famous in Outliers. Here’s the passage in case you missed it:
“All told, they performed for 270 nights in just over a year and a half.
By the time they had their first burst of success in 1964, in fact,
they had performed live an estimated twelve hundred times. … Most bands
today don’t perform twelve hundred times in their entire careers. The
Hamburg crucible is one of the things that set the Beatles apart.” (From this blog post about the band)
Yolanda and Rogelio Garcia Sr. – You’ve never heard of these two and I hadn’t either until I stumbled across this article talking about how they put their kids through college:
For 21 years, the Garcias have supported their family by
picking through garbage, often cutting their fingers on broken glass
while searching for cans and bottles. Late at night they make their
living on the darkened streets and back alleys of Los Angeles, recycling
other people’s trash for cash. They’ve collected more than 8 million
cans and bottles to help put two children through college. Their
youngest is still hitting the books, so Yolanda and Rogelio still hit
the streets every night.
OK, perhaps this doesn’t fit the definition of working as smart as
possible but nevertheless, reading stories like this reminds us that our
“hard work” probably isn’t as hard as we think.
http://jonbischke.com/2009/12/30/hardest-working-people-on-the-planet/