How to Work Hard

June 2021

It might not seem there's much to learn about how to work hard.
Anyone who's been to school knows what it entails, even if they
chose not to do it. There are 12 year olds who work amazingly hard. And
yet when I ask if I know more about working hard now than when I
was in school, the answer is definitely yes.

One thing I know is that if you want to do great things, you'll
have to work very hard. I wasn't sure of that as a kid. Schoolwork
varied in difficulty; one didn't always have to work super hard to
do well. And some of the things famous adults did, they seemed to
do almost effortlessly. Was there, perhaps, some way to evade hard
work through sheer brilliance? Now I know the answer to that question.
There isn't.

The reason some subjects seemed easy was that my school had low
standards. And the reason famous adults seemed to do things
effortlessly was years of practice; they made it look easy.

Of course, those famous adults usually had a lot of natural ability
too. There are three ingredients in great work: natural ability,
practice, and effort. You can do pretty well with just two, but to
do the best work you need all three: you need great natural ability
and to have practiced a lot and to be trying very hard.
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