It's stalling your career and making you burn out
at work, you need to stop working hard, and you
need to do this instead, in today's video, we
really need to talk about why this whole working
hard thing doesn't work. The reason why we believe
it's the way to get ahead and why it absolutely is
not and what you should be doing instead. Because
of course, this is not about becoming some lazy
slacker who doesn't do any actual work. This is
about becoming more effective, accelerating your
career, and having some semblance of work life
balance, or whatever you want to call it. If that
sounds good. Give this video a like, and let's
jump straight into it. Okay, so there's one place
that we need to start and that is why do we think
that hard work is the answer. Now for most of you
watching this video right now, you have been told
your whole life, that hard work, build success,
you were told this by your parents, you were told
this by your teachers, you might have been told it
by coaches, by friends, by so many people whose
opinion really mattered to you in life, throughout
your education, the hours that you put in, were
probably associated with achievement. And that
might not have just been academic. It also could
have been in clubs you were in, in sports, all
sorts of things. However, what we need to think
about is when we get into the professional, and
particularly the corporate world, what does hard
work actually mean? Now typically, when we talk
about hard work, we're talking about a few things.
Typically, when we talk about working hard, what
we're really talking about is working a lot of
hours. In fact, the minority of people are working
a 40 Hour Workweek and Gallup polling in August
2021 43% of adults reported that they were working
43 to 44 hours per week. 25% said that they were
working between 45 in 59 hours a week, that's one
in four people working more than 45 hours a week
and 16%, we're working above 60 hours per week,
there are many industries we're working beyond 60
hours is an industry norm. And many of the clients
that I work with are working 50 6070 and even 80
hours a week, it is not healthy, and it is not
sustainable. And we'll get into that a little bit
more in just a few minutes. But working hard
doesn't always need the number of hours that
you're working. It also can relate to the days
that you're working, there is a very toxic culture
about not taking days off, whether it's for
vacation, or even for sick time. In fact, in 2018,
there were 768 million vacation days that were
unused. And what we saw in the last year and a
half with all of the things going on that shall
not be named, the majority of Americans stopped
using their paid time off their PTO. And then
actually I want to know from you, when was the
last time that you took days off? Let me know in
the comments down below. Another thing that we
might mean when we say working hard really might
just be prioritizing work over everything else.
And yes, I do think that sometimes work is a
priority. There's big product launches, there is a
really important project that you're working on.
Yes, sometimes work comes before other things. But
it shouldn't be the only thing that comes first.
So now that we're clear that working hard usually
means working a lot of hours working all of the
days, and not taking any time off and putting your
work. First, I need to ask a genuine question.
Does doing those things actually make you more
successful? Well, if we looked at the research,
the answer is probably not to begin with if you're
working all of the hours, it's actually making you
less productive. This is one of my favorite
studies to talk about. It was conducted at
Stanford. And what it looked at was productivity
with increased hours. And what the researchers
found was that productivity began to decline after
50 hours a week. And after 55 hours, it literally
fell off a cliff participants in the study who
were working more than 70 hours a week had the
same productivity level as someone working 55
hours a week. And if I were to interpret that, I
can tell you that that means that they were
working 15 hours, that's basically two working
days if we're thinking eight hour days
accomplishing absolutely nothing. And when I think
about this qualitatively of what I've observed in
different offices at different companies is that
often this is very performative. People are
sitting at their desk, but they're not really
doing work. Sure, maybe they're present in their
office or in front of the computer screen for 70
hours a week, but they're not actually
accomplishing anything more. And taking that time
to do something outside of work would actually
make them more productive. No, of course, all of
this time that you're working and with no days
off, it actually has a negative impact on your
health. It makes you sick time. off, whether it's
at the end of the day or for an annual vacation is
going to have multiple health benefits. First and
foremost, it is going to relieve stress and that
is so necessary in order for you to be effective
and productive at work. But more than that time
off can also decrease your risk of heart disease,
and just make you happier and who doesn't want to
be happier. Now, I've gotten to know a lot of you
who watch my channel, and we have so many
conversations. And there is one commonality that
I've observed with pretty much everyone that I
have gotten to know. And that is, there's a lot of
high performers around here are you all are high
achievers, you were smart, you are intelligent,
you were ambitious. And you are aware that you can
achieve a lot of things at work, you tend to be
exceptional at what you do, and you bring that
high performance to absolutely everything that you
do. And this is where we need to stop breaking
down the working hard to working smart. The thing
is your high performance is the problem. high
performers tend to highly perform on all of the
things whether they matter or not, for example,
Who here is guilty of working all day to maintain
Inbox Zero, or being hyper organized and
chronological when submitting a expense report. If
you are a high performer, you probably tend to
overachieve on all of the things, you know that
you're able of doing your work to an exceptionally
high standard. And that is the standard that you
are setting for yourself. And it does not matter
if that task is mission critical, something that
is important to the CEO of your company, or if
it's just about managing your inbox. Now if you're
a little bit guilty of that just type guilty into
the comments down below. The thing is, is when you
bring your top performance to absolutely
everything that you do, and even start to
volunteer to take on more things, your performance
starts to be dispersed to things that might not
necessarily move the needle in your career. And
this might be the exact thing that is making you
stuck. The thing is, is if the impact that you're
making is not a priority for your boss, for your
leadership, or for your company, no one's really
going to notice it, it doesn't matter if you
submit the most detailed and chronological expense
reports. Sure, it might help the person who is
processing your expense report. But it doesn't
really matter for the company for the amount of
time that you're investing into it. And this
brings me to a point because this comes up in the
comments an awful lot. And that is complaining
about lazy co workers or lazy bosses who keep on
getting promoted, even though they're not doing
anything. The thing is, we kind of need to take a
few cues from them. There's a reason why lazy co
workers are being promoted, they're being praised,
and they're being acknowledged. When you're not on
for an answer to this, we can look to a framework
that was created by Mondo Frank. and in it he
looked at what actually helps someone get a
promotion. Now for those of you who are focused on
high performance and being the best at all of the
things, the thing is your performance is only
impacting about 10% of your career progression,
just a teeny, tiny sliver of whether you got ahead
or not. What's more important is your image that's
accounting for about 30% of your impro motability.
At work image is essentially what people know you
for, are you known for being the person that will
always pitch in and ahead and it's a dependable
team member who absolutely can't be lost? Or are
you an authority and a leader out what you do. And
the final piece of the equation is exposure coming
in at 60%. This is all about who knows what you
do, what impacts you're making, and who knows
about it, who within your organization knows what
achievements you're making, does your boss's
boss's boss know your name and what you're working
on, or even more importantly, how you just
generated a whole bunch of revenue for the company
or saved them a ton of money when you're making
the right impact and the right people know about
it. A lot of the other corporate bs really matters
a lot less in my opinion. And that leads us now
into what to do about it. How do you stop relying
on working hard, working all the time, and really
start to take a strategic approach to your effort
and investment at work so that you are
overachieving on the right things standing out and
getting ahead. Well, first and foremost, I have to
tell you to set boundaries and I have a whole
video on work life boundaries that I think are
really important for you to have but prioritizing
your personal time and setting an end time for
your day is going to make sure That you have time
to invest in yourself and to the areas of your
life that are most important to you, because of
work is consuming all of the things and all of
your life, you're not going to be as happy as you
could be, even if you do love your job. Next, it's
time to start focusing on impact over hours. Now,
I know this is complicated if you're in a company
that doesn't value impact over hours, and that
performatively sitting by your computer until 8pm,
every night is more important than actually
getting things done. However, I have seen in many
of those circumstances where achievement truly
does Trump, the performative nature of investing a
lot of hours, as long as what you're doing is of
high impact and high visibility, the amount of
time that you're doing shouldn't matter. Now, if
you are in one of those industries, where you're
being measured based on billable time or something
like that, there's two things that you need to
consider first and foremost, is it just part of
the job, and it's not going to be a forever thing,
but you know, you kind of have to, I hate using
this term, because I think it's toxic, but do you
need to pay your dues. On the other hand, though,
if this is something that is always going to be in
play, or it's just not acceptable, even for a
short period of time, maybe you need to reconsider
were establishing your career. And the most
important thing in this element is knowing where
to invest your time. And I actually have a
workshop glow up your career where I talk about
how to find the strategic impact. I'll leave the
link in the description bar in case you wanted to
check it out. And finally, because of what we saw,
in regards to how much your performance versus
image versus exposure matters, it's really time
for you to start investing on building your
professional brands, people should know you for
your unique awesomeness, and you should be
creating an honorable impact and you shouldn't be
afraid to talk about it. This is so important that
my next few videos are really going to focus on
helping you build your professional brand to help
you stand out at work. And maybe to even make some
opportunities come towards you because no one
complains when recruiters are sliding into their
DMS. Now I'd love to hear from you would you
rather work hard meaning a lot or strategically in
order to advance your career?
Let me know in the comments down below. I'm also
curious This is a little bit of a different format
for me, let me know your thoughts on it as well.
Now if you are looking for more ways that you can
stand out at work right now, I want you to go and
check out this video right here where I give you
some tips but before you go If this video helps
you let go of working hard give it a like really
helps my channel makes you my favorite career
bestie it's a win win situation. As always my
friends thank you so much for watching. I will see
you in the next video. Bye for now.