Does your work feel like hard work? It might be because you’re not working hard enough at the things that really matter. This week I’m talking about the difference between hard work and working hard. Working hard doesn’t have to feel like hard work.
Let’s start off with a clarification.
A lot of people think that because I talk about “love what you do for a living, and make a great living doing what you love”, “work’s supposed to be fun” and all that kind of stuff they think I believe that we should be taking it easy.
Now, there’s a big difference between your work coming from a place of ease, and taking it easy. Let’s be quite clear I’m not saying you shouldn’t be working hard. I just don’t think you should be doing hard work.
I’ll try to explain the difference between those two.
Love vs Fear
Working hard means applying yourself to delivering your genius. You’ve been given this gift of genius from the universe, god, spirit whatever you want to call it, and to honour that gift you work hard. You are committing to delivering that genius to the best of your ability, as often as you can, and as much as you can.
When you’re working hard at delivering your Genius, it’s coming from a place of love.
The difference between that and doing hard work is that with hard work you’re grinding it out. It’s stuff you’d really rather not be doing, it feels like it’s just a chore. Typically, that’s coming from a place of scarcity rather than abundance. You’re thinking “If I don’t do this it’s all going to go horribly wrong, I’m going to run out of money!”
Doing hard work is coming from a place of fear.
Now I don’t know about you, but I would much rather be living my life from a space of love rather than a place of fear.
That’s the major difference. Working hard comes from a place of love and abundance, doing hard work is coming from feelings of fear and scarcity.
Make it easy, it won’t feel like hard work
So how are you going to find ways to make your working hard as easy as it can be? And when I say ‘easy’ I don’t mean simple. I mean something that comes with ease, that doesn’t feel like hard work.
Let me give you an example. I’ve started to do some of my coaching sessions out in the woods. We go for a walk in the forest, and at a certain point we sit down on a tree trunk and then we get into the coaching session proper. It does mean I have to set aside a little bit longer for each session. But it also means I’m out in nature, I’m thoroughly enjoying myself, and I’m even getting some exercise.
So is my client, so everybody’s happy. And to be frank I think the clients are getting more out of being out in nature and relaxed as I ask them those awkward questions. Especially as I can use the first part of the session while we’re walking to explore possibilities.
That’s bringing ease and fun and joy into me working hard at delivering my genius. I don’t do it because I want to make it easy for me to do coaching. I do it because I want to do my coaching from a space of greater ease.
How could you find ways to bring lightness into the way you deliver your genius?
Genius is serious, but it shouldn’t feel like hard work
Your genius is a serious thing. But that doesn’t mean you have to be all serious about it. You can be quite light-hearted about it, and still produce those great results your clients love. Despite being at ease about it – in fact because you’re at your ease – you can still deliver your genius at its absolute best.
Find ways that make working with you more fun for your clients, and to make your working life more fun for you.
When I talk about working hard, I’m not talking about working every hour god sends. I think working too many hours is foolish. It will quickly turn working hard into hard work if you’re not careful.
So you do need to make sure you maintain a decent work-home balance (or work-not-work balance, whatever you want to call that). I don’t talk about work-life balance these days, because I hate the idea that work isn’t part of life. That’s just insane!
You’ve been given a gift, the genius that you’re on the planet to deliver. Why would that not be an important part of your life? So work-life balance is a nonsense idea. (I rant a bit more about that here)
Whether you call it work-leisure balance, work-home balance, whatever phrase works for you, you should absolutely keep that balance. Because it’s in that downtime that you will think of the ways to be lighter in your approach to your work. And that’s the way you avoid it feeling like hard work.
Genius in variety
It’s a question of switching off so you’re not always doing one thing. You know what they say: “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”. If you’re not doing something in your life that’s different to your work, you’re not going to learn new things. That means you’re not going to think of new ways you can apply your genius. That means you’re not going to be as good as you could be, no matter how hard you work.
Working hard at your genius includes seeking to get better at it. If you start to think you’re at the top of your genius and you’ve got nothing left to improve, you’re getting complacent. It’s time to challenge yourself a bit.
So switch off for a while, to create the variety of input that means you can produce a much richer, lighter, easier output. Basically, keep it fun. Make sure you’re always bringing fun into your work.
Obligations feel like hard work
A big difference between working hard and doing hard work can be caused by other people’s expectations. What somebody expects quickly becomes an obligation. If it doesn’t align with what you want for your working life, don’t allow somebody else’s expectation to overrule what you would really love. That’s just making an obligation for yourself.
The only thing that letting other people’s expectations become obligations is going to do is to steal your joy. It will eventually rob your work of all the joy it ever had. You might believe you’re being very noble because you’re doing all this hard work for them, but that’s all excuses.
Those obligations, whatever way you justify them, whatever you rationalise them, those are the thief of joy!
It’s not possible to be joyful in your work if you are doing it because you think somebody else expects you to. The only way to be joyful in your work is to be doing the work you love to do. The work you are great at, the work it gives you an absolute buzz to be brilliant at.
You may well be doing it for other people. That’s why you were given your genius, so you can use it in service of other people. But being in service of others whilst having fun is a totally different thing to the obligation of doing hard work because it’s what other people expect.
Work hard, but only if it doesn’t feel like hard work
To sum up, what we’re talking about here is not that hard, grinding work that comes from fear, from the obligations you allow other people to put on you. It’s that light feeling of you would be doing what you do even if they weren’t paying you. And of course, it’s really cool that you are indeed getting paid for it!
It’s joyfully giving it your all, it’s joyfully honouring that gift that you’ve been given by the universe. Working hard at it rather than doing hard work. Working hard at applying your genius as well and as much as you possibly can.
So if you find that delivering your genius is starting to feel like hard work just ask yourself this. Where are you allowing resentment to creep in from allowing other people’s expectations and obligations to take priority. Where are you not doing this for you?
For fun for you, in service of the gift that the universe has given you. In service of your clients, yes, but for you. For your enjoyment and pleasure and excitement and buzz and everything that makes working hard a joy for you.
Because when you get to that, when you make sure that’s why you’re doing it, working hard is fun!
Time out from working hard
I often work silly hours writing content and putting stuff together and making sure that I’ve got everything in place to deliver my genius. And that is certainly working hard, but I don’t allow it to become hard work.
When it starts to feel like hard work I take some time out. For example, this week some of my more formal work was starting to become a bit like hard work. So yesterday we said, you know what, we’re going to have a cycle ride to a nice pub for lunch. It was a 16 mile cycle ride. Now that was hard!
But although we were working hard at it, it wasn’t hard work. I remember plugging away up this hill, thinking to myself, “Phew, this is hard work!”
But then I thought, “Is it really? Actually, no I’m just working hard at getting up this hill.”
Because I was actually enjoying myself even though my poor legs were working very hard indeed.
Just bear in mind that when you’re saying to yourself that you’re doing this for someone else, that’s hard work! When you’re doing this for you, like I was when I was pedaling up that hill out of Earlswood, that was for me, because I’d chosen to give myself some time out to avoid my work becoming hard work.
The next day I was back to working hard, applying myself, putting all of myself into my genius. And I was having fun, and that’s where I want you to be!
What’s next?
If you’d like to get more into the whole Joyful Genius thing and figure out how to do working hard and not hard work, a good place to start would be to join the Joyful Genius Global Community.
Or alternatively, if you’d like a chat about how you might be able to apply these principles more for yourself, just 15 minutes or so, there’s a link below to book into my diary. We can chat through where you are right now, and where would you love to get to. And maybe what’s getting in your way and is there anything I can do to help. If there isn’t, great, I’ll refer you back to the community. And if there is, then I promise to invite you.
I promise not to sell to you, because for me selling is hard work!
But inviting – that’s fun!
So with that, I will invite you to book on for a call.
It would be a delight to speak to you, and I promise, anything but hard work!