“I worked really hard and yet I failed”

This is one of the most common line I have ever heard from people.

Most people assume that one cannot achieve success despite putting in the hard work and success really depends on luck.

However the real problem is that most people cannot distinguish between manual labor and actual hard work.

Most people are stuck doing manual labor which fetches them no result.

Success on the other hand highly depends on what I call “High Impact Activities”.

A majority of people ignore these “High Impact Activities” because they are “Hard”.

Now don’t get me wrong, here hard activities does not mean they take effort, its just that they are least pleasant to do.

Hence people try avoiding these activities and focus all their energy and effort on low impact activities.

Lets take an example for both HIA and LIA:

In business context:

HIA: Cold calling customers, selling them products on the phone or reaching out to new customers, following up new leads.

LIA: Designing logo for your website, spending time to learn so called “productivity tips” from YouTube after wasting hours on designing the logo which you could have outsourced on fiver for $5.

In a student context:

HIA: Focusing on the most important yet hard topics and understanding them thoroughly.

LIA: Spending more time on easier topics, topics which you already know well.

In a newbie programmers context:

HIA: Working on a personal project which involves building something.

LIA: Reading and searching for answers on sites, deciding which code editor to use, debating on which programming language is better.

I hope this gives a clear idea of how High Impact Activities are different from Low Impact Activities.

If you compare them both, you will find that both of them take the same amount of effort to do.

However if you take a look at HIA, they are not very comfortable or pleasing to do.

Designing a logo for your business seems like a nice idea while cold calling a client sounds rough and hence people tend to deviate towards things that are of less importance just because they find pleasure doing them.

High performers on the other end know what activities would create the most impact for them and hence they are willing to do them irrespective of how un-pleasurable they are to do.

Doing hard work does not mean working like a donkey on some simple things.

Here is what hard work looks like:

1. Deciding and doing something which you know is not pleasurable but can give you the maximum results.
2. Taking risks in all walks of your life, switching careers if the current one does not pay you well.
3. Taking hard decisions, making a complete shift in the way you operate and think.
4. Taking responsibility, hiring people, or learning some new skill which can change the course of your career.
5. Being able to manage and make the most efficient use of your time.
6. Being consistent for years doing anything, be it at a business, learning new skills, or working out.
7. Doing something which you have never done before, or doing something where you are uncertain about the outcome.

These are the actual activities which can be termed as hard work.

The day you understand the difference between manual labor and real hard work is the day when your life would change completely.

-Saurav Sharma

Firstly, stop creating false beliefs in your mind