Working Hard on the Right Things

Hello!

Here we are, it’s Monday again. Rather than dread Mondays, I like to think of them as motivational. To help celebrate this under celebrated day, every Monday I’ll try and post something to inspire, or at least make you think. Welcome to Motivational Mondays!

“So often people are working hard at the wrong thing. Working on the right thing is probably more important than working hard.” - Caterina Fake

I was scrolling through Pinterest while sipping my morning coffee (and making sure my toddler didn’t shove the entire banana in her mouth) when I stumbled across a pretty picture that had the above quote on it. It certainly made me stop and think about all the times I’ve worked myself exhausted (more on that in a moment) and brought to my attention that I had no idea who Caterina Fake was.

After my toddler was successfully down for a nap, I took a moment to research Caterina Fake. To help me research, I jumped to my favorite magazine - Entrepreneur. What I could find is that she’s a serial entrepreneur with an unquenchable appetite for learning and growing (sounds like my kind of person!). She was a co-founder of Flicker and of Hunch, as well as being a founding partner of a venture capital fund called Founder.

Now back to the quote. This jumped out to me for a number of reasons, but the most prominent one was this - I have been on a team that worked hard on the wrong thing.

In order for an individual, a team, a business, or even a family unit to succeed, they need to work hard on the right thing. You have to make sure that the actions you are conducting, the products you are producing, or the services you are providing are working towards the mission.

My embarrassing moment

One example that makes me cringe looking back on it, is when I took on a contract writing content for a blog based out of New York. I was excited because it was affiliated with a major newspaper from New York and my brain instantly raced about my little “15 minutes of fame”. I worked so hard on it, researching products to compare and taking my time to write it well. I made sure every “t” was crossed and every “i” was dotted. I kept in constant communication with the client, whom was a middle man editor between the main client (the head editor) and myself. I worked so hard, and was confident when I handed it in. The middle man editor was impressed with my work and said he would be in touch when heard back from the head editor. However… things did NOT end up how I expected.

Rather than receive praise from the head editor, she delivered mocking insults to the middle man client. While I thought I worked hard to make the article enjoyable and easy to read, the head editor’s impression was that I was an amateur, features too much emotion and she yelled at the middle man editor for being stupid enough to think my work was acceptable.

As I hung my head in embarrassment, and he hung his head in shame, he gracefully thanked me for my time and paid me $20 for the effort (from his own pocket since the head editor refused all payment for my work). I was devastated, and it caused me to question how this contract went horribly wrong. How did both a competent middle man editor and an experience content writer miss the mark so badly? To be honest, it made me question my ability to write at all.

Looking back at the situation, after reading this quote, I completely understand. I did work incredibly hard, but I worked hard on the wrong thing. I focused on making my article enjoyable and easy to read, so I put a lot of my personality in it. What I didn’t do is make sure that the article was to the high standards of professionalism that a New York based blog would demand. If I would have focused on the right work, rather than working hard, things might have had a better outcome.

The take away from this is: working hard is a good thing, as long as it’s on the right thing. it’s better to work on the right things towards achieving your goals or missions than to work hard on the wrong things that can potentially prevent you from achieving success.

If you find yourself working hard on the wrong things, like focusing on administrative work rather than focusing on tasks that accomplish your mission, then consider delegating those tasks to a more appropriate team member or outsourcing them to a virtual assistant, like AK Lean Virtual Assistance.

(Source: T. Evans. (2011). Caterina Fake on Stepping into the Unknown. https://www.entreprenur.com/article/219402)