Working hard is supposed to give you bragging rights.
The more hours you work the more you want your goal. The hard work mindset came from the office worker information age. Here’s what it looks like:
Sit in traffic. Go to a job. Do boring work. Get told what to do. Then get paid a mediocre salary that barely covers your bills. Inflation then makes you poorer every year while your salary doesn’t go up and you’re constantly fighting layoffs.
This is what people who worship hard work fall for.
They think working hard at a job is good. It gets worse. The hard work mindset leads to “Oh, and I’m also incredibly busy too.”
Busy = MY LIFE IS OUT OF CONTROL
It’s a sign someone can’t tell you where their time is going. They don’t have enough hours in the day and admit it. And they’re likely sacrificing parts of their life like family and hobbies to meet other people’s demands and “work hard.”
Working hard to become busy makes you dirt poor – both financially and mentally.
100 years ago, a German General discovered the secret to wealth
In the 1930s, Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord, the Commander-in-Chief of the Reichswehr, categorized his officers into a 2 x 2 matrix based on 2 traits:
Intellect and Energy.
The Four Categories of Effort
1. The Clever and Hardworking: Hammerstein-Equord valued these for staff positions. They are great at execution and handling complex details.
However, he warned against putting them in ultimate command. Why? Because they are too focused on the “how” to see the “why.”
2. The Stupid and Lazy: He famously said, “90% of every army is made up of these, and they are useful for routine tasks.”
They do what they are told and nothing more. They aren’t a threat to the system, but they aren’t the winners either.
3. The Stupid and Hardworking (The Danger Zone): Hammerstein-Equord said these people must be fired immediately.
The Reason: Because they have high energy but no direction. They create “busy work” for everyone else. They make simple things complex. They start unnecessary “fires” just so they can feel productive putting them out. In the modern world, these are the people who send 100 emails to solve a problem that required one 2-minute phone call.
4. The Clever and Lazy (The Elites): These were his choice for high command.
The Logic: A “clever and lazy” person has the intellect to see the goal, but because they are “lazy,” they have a biological drive to find the path of least resistance.
They avoid unnecessary meetings.
They cut out redundant processes.
They find the leverage point that wins the war with the least amount of blood and treasure spent.
General Kurt realized the “hardest workers” were actually the most dangerous people in his army.
Society trains us to be stupid and hardworking. We’re taught to value the feeling of exhaustion over the value of achieving a result.
The huge economic shift hard workers have missed
You can’t work hard and get rich from brute force or manual labor anymore.
At the hospital the other day, I saw an R2D2 robot cleaning the walls of the toilet. I almost didn’t see it. Then I was like “What?! This hospital has no cleaners. It’s all robots.”
If I blinked I would’ve missed it.
Hundreds of people were walking past these hospital robots oblivious to what was happening. I sat there in awe. Working hard using manual labor is dumb because a robot can now beat you.
Robots don’t need coffee, co-workers, meaning, motivation, sleep, or breaks. They can work 24/7 without taking a piss. And can’t complain about fair pay or join a union.
Same applies to knowledge workers who attend offices.
You can’t outwork AI. If all you bring to the table is brute force and “I can do all these spreadsheets for you by 5PM boss,” you’re now replaceable. Menial tasks don’t create value in a world of AI.
It’s scary to say that as a former office worker.
Here’s what’s changed…
You now get paid for outcomes that your skills help you create.
In the old world your degree signaled competence and potential. But in this new economy nobody gives a f*ck about what you might be able to do or how hard you can work. We just care about outcomes and we require proof-of-work to back it up.
All the status signalling, memorizing information, following the rules, and people-pleasing the professors with cute smiles and flirty gestures doesn’t work anymore.
Produce an outcome right now or get the f*ck out of my inbox… is the new mantra. And 99% of people haven’t woken up to this new world order. They’re still asking for permission and working hard toward a career that’ll make them replaceable.
The delusion of hard work:
To feel like you should be compensated for the amount of work you do instead of the amount of value you create. There is a massive difference.
– Dan Koe
The illusion of rewards that come from hard work
The work hard mindset is driven by perceived rewards.
When I worked in finance bankers used to say, “Two more years until I make partner.” Two years would pass and I’d ask them, “Why aren’t you partner yet?”
They’d always repeat back a convenient lie their boss had told them.
“The bank’s revenue is down this year. It’ll be next year.”
“The General Manager changed so he needs time to build his team.”
“Johnno got the partner role because he landed that big client.”
The truth they weren’t willing to face was multi-faceted:
Those who self-promote unfairly get rewarded faster
Time in a job isn’t a guarantee of a promotion anymore
Bosses play favorites and can give their inexperienced mate a promotion without backlash (it’s all about who you know not what you know)
Mass layoffs can strike and blow up all your precious little promotion fantasies
Corporations don’t give a crap about their workers. They do whatever they want.
No reward is guaranteed when you’re working hard in a permission-seeking job.
Working hard is a mask for the hidden root cause
There’s a deeper layer to this.
I’ve worked with 6000+ people who identify as hard workers. It’s been an interesting look into how people think about working hard.
When you peel back the layers of their life, one big thing becomes obvious:
They work hard without knowing why to distract themselves from their refusal to change.
Why do they refuse to change? Because to do so would require them to face deep philosophical questions such as:
What is the meaning of life?
Why do I do what I do?
Where does this all lead?
It’s easier to just work hard and be oblivious to what it means to be a human than it is to face your humanity head on and try to answer these existential questions.
This is why the distraction economy exists.
It’s easier to look at your phone all day than it is to look people in the eyes or be present. It’s easier to read junk food content on the news section on social media than it is to read a book like “Man’s Search For Meaning.”
It’s easier to binge-watch some shallow as hell Netflix tv show than it is to watch a documentary on World War 2. It’s easier to outsource all your thinking to AI and rely on it to tell you what to do than it is to write a journal entry describing your painful path to divorce and losing your kids.
Only when you face life and stop performing for clowns by working hard, do you reach higher states of consciousness that change the very fabric of your reality.
Nothing will ever look the same again.
“Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning”
(Malcolm Gladwell)
If you analyze that quote further, you see we’re all just working hard because there is a silent meaning crisis no one wants to admit.
Yes, you’re working hard, but do you actually give a f*ck about the work you’re doing?
Most people will lie and pretend they like email forwarding as a job all day. But if you can get them to stop lying (usually with alcohol), then you’ll get the truth.
People’s work has no meaning. This may seem depressing, but it’s not.
As AI, tech, and robots take away all the bullsh*t work, what we’ll be left with is the creative and imaginative work that made the renaissance era one of the best times in history. When all the donkey work and admin tasks disappear humans will be forced to do what humans do best: solve real problems.
This is what will give us meaning again.
“The hardest work most people never do is thinking about what would work better.” – Myron Golden
The huge financial cost of working hard
You can’t outwork others.
Working hard keeps you poor because the game isn’t “number of hours worked.” It’s leverage versus non-leverage.
Writer Sahil Bloom describes leverage like this:
“Leverage is anything that multiplies the force of your inputs.”
The secret I learned in banking is to become wealthy you must take whatever money you have and use it to create leverage. Most don’t do this. If they make more money or get a pay rise, then they spend the money on pleasure to avoid the meaning problem.
Or they take the extra money and use it to get into more debt to buy more stuff they don’t need. Wealthy people don’t do this.
They take an increase in income and reinvest it in building more leverage.
Leverage looks like:
Investing money in assets that make more money
Investing money in themselves to get more skills
Investing in AI and software to have better systems and save time
Investing in help to create content that increases their distribution
Leverage is why the poor work harder and the rich get richer while working less.
Final Thought
You can predict most people’s financial future by understanding how they view hard work. If they worship it or brag about being busy, they’re screwed.
The traditional path said get a good job and work hard Sonny Jim and you’ll have everything you want in life, including a hot partner, good car, dog, and a white picket fence. The new path says this:
Build projects that create outcomes
Use the projects to demonstrate competence
Amplify projects by sharing your ideas on social media to build distribution
Make money from your skill stack
Invest money in creating more leverage
This is how you produce compounding results that no hard worker can ever compete with. And how you experience modern freedom without being chained to a desk 24/7 and having a calendar full of useless meetings that could’ve been an email.
The new path is available to everyone. Are you willing to change?
