We Didn’t Do Anything Today, We’ll Have to Give Them Hell Tomorrow
A favorite saying from my uncle Steve who grew up on a 600 acre potato farm in North Dakota and knew hard labor was from sun-up to sun-down.
Notable Quotes
“You can’t cheat the grind, it knows how much you have invested, and it won’t give you anything you haven’t worked for.”
Anonymous
“There is no substitute for hard work.”
Thomas Alva Edison
“Great things come from hard work and perseverance. No Excuses.”
Kobe Bryant
“I know the price of success: dedication, hard work and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen.”
Frank Lloyd Wright
The Elements of Hard Work by Jack Busch
Hard work is but one of the ways you can achieve your goals. For those of us who aren’t inordinately wealthy, smart, or lucky, it’s the only way. While each person’s path to success will be unique, the anatomy of the hard work that they do often looks very similar. For most successful people, the hard work that they put forth included all of the following:
The Drive – This is the motivation, the inspiration, the entire reason you work hard. This is the engine that pushes your efforts forward.
The Plan – If The Drive is the heart of your hard work, then the plan is the skeleton. The plan maps out your course of action and helps plot your progress and keep you on track.
The Grind – The Grind is the point when working hard stops being fun and exciting and starts becoming tedious, stressful and perhaps even discouraging. How you handle the grind is often what separates the winners from the quitters.
The Sacrifice – This is the crux of hard work, and the one thing that makes hard work truly hard. Any ambitious goal requires significant personal sacrifice. Enduring the strain in your relationships, finances and comfort level is the real test.
The Payoff – This is the brass ring. In order for hard work to be worthwhile, you have to define a number of goals and milestones and recognize when you’ve achieved them. And once you do, you have to up the ante and keep going.
Farmer and the Preacher, Ronald Reagan, in a speech in Indianapolis
A farmer took a piece of bad earth and made things flourish thereon. Proud of his successes, he asked his minister to come by and see what he had done. The minister was impressed. "That's the tallest corn I've ever seen. I've never seen anything as big as those melons. Praise the Lord!" He went on that way about every crop, praising the Lord for it all.
Finally the farmer couldn't take it anymore. "Reverend," he said, "I wish you could have seen this place when the Lord was doing it by himself."
Suggested Reading
Hard Work: Success Made Easy by Michael Crews
Point of Reflection
“A lot of hard work is hidden behind nice things.”
Ralph Lauren