Whatever it is that is difficult to you, or that you feel would be difficult, or that you avoid, is what you want to be doing right now. The casual and leisurely activities are what you will regret giving your time to. This may seem obvious, but my focus here is to point out the lack of value in those leisurely, or less intensive, activities. We often see short-term gains from spending time working on them, but these short-term gains are not actually there, and realizing this serves to negate the motivation to take part in them.
Time-wasting Enjoyable Activities Are Nothing
Here is an attack on those activities you do for leisure. They are not what they are cracked up to be. What are you taking a break from? A break is a period of less effort or mindless activity after a period of harder work. Maybe you don’t need to cut out the breaks, but instead make breaks consist of mindful activity, or work that is not as hard as your regular work. That hard work will get easier the more you do it anyway.
Are You Getting Big Value From Your Breaks?
When you take a break, or a really long break, are you getting enough out of it to come back with vigor? You have to check to see if your breaks are used for avoidance of something you don’t want to do, and shouldn’t be doing, in the first place. If you find yourself wanting to extend your breaks far too long, there can be a problem with what your work consists of.
Work Is Opportunity In Disguise
I once read that work is actually a disguise for vast opportunity that is available. It isn’t the hard thing that is worth trying to circumvent. Any viewing of work as that tough thing to avoid keeps it as that tough thing to avoid. You can’t make it the thing that is not there to avoid until you approach it wholeheartedly. We never hear someone talk about a past thing they did as that hard because retrospect shows us that the things we battled through weren’t actually that difficult in the first place. This is not to say to assume that everything will be easy from a perspective of foresight, but there are manageable ways through each portion of a large task.
Rush Through If It Helps
If you’ve got some hard work you’re not tackling, it might help you to rush through the initial steps in a confused state. Whatever it is might look hard to attack from a position of stagnation, but if you can build up momentum in any way, through exercise or doing word searches or learning vocabulary or organizing quickly, you can then take that momentum, and start crashing through the fence blocking you from starting the hard thing. Also, keep in mind that your competition is sitting there glad that you are standing behind the fence instead of breaking through it. A gated community is only able to set itself apart from local communities through the use of the gated system.
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Well written article, I really like your blog.
Nice post Armen. People expect a magical way to getting to success. This article reminded me of back-to-basics: hard work and persistence will result in opportunity, success, and more leisure time for breaks.
Perry: Thanks for that, and the comment about the site in general.
Tristan: That is true. We first either expect it to just arrive, or expect it to come with ease. I sure wanted to attack the value of some times of leisure time through this article, so the message would be sent to get back to the real material we should be doing. Thanks for your thoughts.
Well, any form of leisure will bring us nothing for our growth, and I agree with you on that. We can learn a lot from hard work because we are able to discover our true capabilities. Blogging is a hard work but I’m learning a lot from it and I learn a lot from bloggers like you Armen.
Walter: That is a good way to put it. Leisure doesn’t get us growth. That is a nice comment of yours, and I would add that there is competition and difficulty in every realm of activity. I learn from others similarly as you do, from your material and from the actions I see taken by yourself and others. One of my next articles will build upon the points in this article.
My greatest obstacle in getting the hard things done is when unsure exactly how to tackle the task, I get paralyzed. I am very aware of this problem but still fall in the trap, I will try the suggestion of rushing through the task. I like the idea that leisure time is a lack of vision.
Hi Jeanette.
I get that tackling task item sometimes too. I get stuck there. Sometimes I ask for help on some place online. Sometimes I give up on the thing and later find out some other way. That’s a tough one when it happens. Rushing through the task sometimes helps me get through the hard part, and sometimes gets me side-tracked.
That point about leisure time is one I wanted to emphasize. Leisure time is when our real goals are put on the back-burner, which doesn’t make much sense, unless the time is for actual resting/recuperation.
Thanks for your information.
Hi armen,
This post made me smile and feel refreshed. I get lost in my thoughts at times asking questions revolving round my working hard. I get criticized once in a while but when i look at the results of hardwork, the benefits of rest and sees likeminded people involved in more challenging activities, I am encouraged to do better(not risking my health though).
Great Post by the way!!!
Ayo: I like the response you gave there. I am glad it was positive like that.
I hear you about those questions revolving around your working hard. In one short video where Lil’ Wayne talks to Puff Daddy, which I watch every few days, Lil’ Wayne said “When they ask you why you work so hard, you ask them ‘why not?’”. That relates to what you are saying.
Thanks for this message.
A refreshing read. With all those articles on easy money, 4 hour work weeks and effortless success it was nice to get your perspective. I think most of us don’t mind working hard and even enjoy it as long as we have a passion for what we do.
Hey Steve.
Thanks for that. There sure is quite a bit like that huh. Catchy article or book titles are what is recommend for writers to engage, but then the same catchy material isn’t always realistic. It is part of that separation between creator and consumer. Your point about us not minding working hard is a cool one that few are glad to point out, while many others are not interested in it, because their interest has not been located.
Thanks for your thoughts.