Hard Work

There was a time when my second favorite cartoon (after G.I. Joe) was DuckTales. It was about the adventures of Uncle Scrooge and his three nephews, whom he was constantly telling, “Work smarter, not harder.” I was always suspicious of this advice, as I knew it was coming from a Disney cartoon, but was never able to quite put my finger on what it was about it that struck me as odd until now. The allure of this statement seems to be that it gives permission to avoid hard work. If it were simply an encouragement to be innovative, why not say, “Work smart while working hard”? Second, it implies everyone is capable of correctly applying intelligence to work situations, which, in my observed experience, is rarely the case.

During the same time I was watching DuckTales, I was reading Sherlock Holmes mysteries. Sherlock is famous for his unmatched perspective abilities, but the books stress that the key to his success is by using those skills toward correctly applying his tireless movements in order to secure results. He is constantly on the go, and Watson has considerable trouble keeping up with him in a physical sense as well as mental. One way this is highlighted is through the character of Mycroft Holmes, who is Sherlock’s older, and more clever, brother. Mycroft sits in a private club in which silence is required and solves crimes he reads about in the newspaper. He does not see the point in being bothered with practicalities. He does not capture villains. Mycroft Holmes is overtly intended to be the embodiment of bureaucracy. (In one story Sherlock remarks that Mycroft sometimes is the government, and explains, “The conclusions of every department are passed to him, and he is the central exchange, the clearinghouse, which makes out the balance.”)

Some people work smarter and not harder by delegating tasks. Delegating should be used to give tasks to more qualified persons and when there is more work than one person can handle, and so ideally, delegating does not eschew hard work. Unfortunately, it is too often used to enable shifting blame when work isn’t done correctly and taking credit when it is. People who aren’t working have a curious habit of telling those who are how they should be doing it. One obstacle I am trying to unlearn is the paranoia that when others suggest alternative approaches, they are suggesting that I’m incompetent. In reality, others, especially males, aren’t taking another’s competence into consideration at all and are merely demonstrating theirs, or at least attempting to. There is nothing easier than pointing out the flaws in others, so there is nothing more obnoxious than it being done smugly. Those who refuse to find a solution to a problem are responsible for the problem continuing to exist, even while they point their finger at those who caused it. There is nobody lower than he who thinks there is work beneath him. Leaving problems for whoever is blamed for causing them to fix is often not prudent or effective, but problems caused by ignorance must be addressed. A person can’t be blamed for continuously making the same mistake if nobody is informing them of the mistake being made. Deciding, “They should know better,” rather than determining if they do is just another example of ducking hard work and responsibility.

I spent a lot of time this week pulling weeds. Every so often someone would wander up to inform me that it would go much faster if I used RoundUp. If I wasn’t at work, where I’m obliged to maintain a modicum of professionalism, I’d respond it would go a lot quicker if I dropped a missile on it, too. Why use a poison that destroys everything to do a task I can perform with my bare hands? I wasn’t trying to get rid of grass or poison ivy. In order to avoid debate, I responded by saying corporate didn’t want RoundUp to be used (a great example of effectively shifting blame). They would then point out that I should get a weed-pulling tool. This tool is actually useful for using on broken-off roots, but I broke my weed-pulling tool last fall. For most weeding, though, using a weed-pulling tool would simply add an unnecessary extra step. Strangely, and tellingly, nobody pointed out that I should be wearing gloves. I wasn’t, not only because they are cumbersome and because I’ve perfected the art of kicking thistles to get to their root without getting stabbed, but because I had an ulterior motive of using the opportunity to build my grip strength for playing disc golf, which is currently my main hobby.

Anybody who appreciates The Karate Kid (1984), which was, of course, was my second favorite childhood movie, after the Star Wars trilogy, understands the necessity of dedicated hard work in obtaining any goal, even when it seems irrelevant or pointless. Hard work can be fulfilling or frustrating, depending upon whether you can see its results. Along with the motivation to improve, stubborn persistence is one of the most useful traits a human can possess. Hard work demands having faith in the process and a belief that it is beneficial in and of itself. If you can’t be proud of having the work you are responsible for completed correctly and timely, how can you exhibit any pride at all? One thing hard work does not necessarily lead to is monetary success, which is enough to make it seem pointless to many.

One maxim I have is: If you aren’t working harder than everybody else, you’re not working hard enough. Another is: If it’s not your job to worry about someone else’s job, don’t. It is difficult to remain a diligent worker without others attempting to take advantage of your willingness to contribute. It is difficult to remain a diligent worker without others attempting to take advantage of your willingness to contribute. There is certainly a limit to how much work a person can do, and a time when that fact should be voiced. How hard you work should not be tied to how much you are being paid until an actual risk to your life is involved. Aside from breaks and lunch, no employee has ever negotiated for a percentage of the work day being set aside for slacking off.

The only alternatives to working hard are to let everything fall into ruin or be dependent upon others to work hard instead. Some people seem to have been given the impression that they should only do things that are fun. The Jane’s Addiction song So What? begins, “Man wasn’t made to work; c’mon build a machine!” which always makes me wonder who should build said machine. If work was fun, they wouldn’t pay you to do it, they’d charge. However, working hard is more satisfying and enjoyable than avoiding it by doing nothing. People don’t generally exclaim, “I really love my job because I get to sit around and do nothing all day.”

The embracement of laziness leads directly to learned helplessness and incompetence. In our quest to avoid doing anything, we avoid learning how to do anything, and become increasingly dependent upon others to perform any tasks we require and produce any goods we need. As we continue to avoid doing things we feel we don’t have to know how to do, learning how to perform new tasks becomes more and more uncomfortable, until we succumb to uselessness and irrelevance. In many aspects of our everyday lives, automatons have already taken over, which I suppose is okay if our ambitions are to “sleep and make love deeper,” or at least stare at a computer screen waiting for something entertaining to appear.