Working Hard, or Hardly Realistic

Part of the job description, when you do consulting for a living, is a willingness to confront some uncomfortable truths. They usually lead you to opportunities, but unless you can live with an awkward minute or meeting, you are in the wrong business. So I'm going to peel back the shade for a moment or two here, and point out something that very few people ever admit, at least out loud.

While I pride myself on my worth ethic and rate, I will never feel that I'm working hard enough, or even that I work all that hard. At most of my positions, for most of my life. Let me go a step further on this, dear theoretical reader... I doubt that you work very hard, either.

Now, let's walk this back and give it its proper context. We do marketing and advertising for a living. Rather than, well, brute labor. We're not on our feet unless we want to be, and finagle a standing desk. We're not dealing with unsafe work environments, likely workplace injuries, wearing special shoes for support, and so on, and so on. If we're worn out at the end of the day, it's because that, on some level, we've chosen to be worn out. Either through a stress story that we tell ourselves as a trigger to self-motivate, or because we've taken on aspects of the job that aren't all that necessary, but seem that way, because a stressful job is an important job. Or we've taken the wrong job, and are trying to make it right. (That never works, by the way. Spoiler alert.)

Perhaps you feel that the entirety of the work you do, when you roll in housework, child or elder care, or uncredited work that's outside of your role, gets you to that magical realm of working hard enough to cast aside all doubt. But even then, I submit to the jury of public opinion that technology, in the form of household appliances, smartphones, improved automobiles and so much more, have all added up to take a lot of the work out of our lives.

To substitute, we work hard on a lot of things... that, well, maybe no one has asked us to work hard on. Social media presences. Hobbies. Workouts. Side projects. Keeping abreast of the spiraling number of entertainment options, training pets, getting granular about food intake, and so on, and so on.

Oh, and another thing: when we are working at our highest level, it's not work at all. We're joyously in the weeds of the details, sweating to make a deadline with exhilaration, working a trade show booth while knee-deep in prospects, seeing the culmination of a lot of prior half-speed work race to a conclusion. I've had days where I've seen the sun come up, and it was a surprise.

Which is why a lot of the people who've shared a company with me are convinced I'm a hard worker. But I know better.

The hardest working person I know, or will ever know, is my mom. She raised three kids as a single parent, while keeping a spotless house, while working nights as a bartender. (OK, maybe I worked at her level when I was in college. But not since. The woman's a machine.)

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