This is an interesting topic…
Work; ‘activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a result’
Ethic; ‘a set of moral principles, especially ones relating to or affirming a specified group, field, or form of conduct’
…Does the lady who collects hundreds of plastic bottles off the street, and then weighs them in for a few bucks work hard? Yes…
Does the guy that runs a convenience store, working 16 hour days, every day, work hard? Absolutely…
Does the kid in [place the name of a developing country here] who walks 15 miles each way to school, and then goes to night classes to learn 2 extra languages, work hard? 100%…
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The people above, all work hard, some make more money than the others, and at least one of the people we’ve described, doesn’t even make money (yet)… So what is work ethic, and why bother?
It really depends on what you want out of life in the short, medium and long term. It depends on how much physical and mental work you are prepared to do. It depends on the kind of moral principles you have…
Preparation:
Have you wondered why the elite music stars are able to go on stage and deliver an almost pitch perfect performance, with great choreography night after night? This is not a mistake; this is not ‘luck’. The 2-hour stage show that you witness, has been meticulously planned and rehearsed, sometimes to ‘breaking point’
This is what ‘high achievers’ and ‘top performers’ do; they leave very, very little to chance.
Time:
How much time are you putting into your craft? We don’t know the exact wording – but the martial artist Bruce Lee once said he was not concerned with ‘the guy who had 100 different kicks’ but he was more concerned with ‘the guy who practised ‘1’ kick, over and over again’. There is a direct correlation with the amount of time you put into your craft, your task, your skill set and your results.
The more you put in, the more you will get out. This is simple maths.
Talent:
In business (or recruitment, to be more specific) – we truly believe that the ‘process’ can be taught and learned. If you want to be an NBA all-star basketball player, but you are only 4 feet tall, this could prove to be extremely difficult. Jumping 6 feet into the air; is deemed in some quarters to be a God given talent…
…but if you harness your energy and focus hard enough, you can ‘develop’ ANY set of skills in order to become successful… Ironically, with success – you will be dubbed the ‘talented one’ – but in our opinion, great results are not bestowed upon the talented, but those that maximise efforts to ‘improve’ their skill set.
Effort:
This sort of speaks for itself. The more you are willing to sacrifice, the more chance you give yourself for success. It is usually a ‘defeatist’ attitude that kills positive results. However, there must be a ‘realism’ with your efforts, and failures (i.e. not attaining the desired results) should be re-branded as ‘experiences’. If you learn from your experiences, there will always be another opportunity to ‘win’.
Successful people ‘train their brain’ to repeat the same task 100 times (with minor tweaks), because they know that the desired result is inevitable, provided that they keep going…
Smart:
This is the KEY.
If an action is yielding absolutely ‘no traction’, why continue? If you know that ‘acting fast’ is likely to give you a head start over your competitors, why wait? If you are NEVER operating outside of your ‘comfort zone’, this means you are not growing, so why would you choose to shrink? If your colleague is getting the same results in X hours as you are in Y hours, why not ‘study’ their behaviour?
A lot of people ‘work hard’ – but they’re working themselves to the bone on activities that simply do not generate the ‘compound interest’ needed to make a significant ‘return on investment’.
Purpose:
At Jonothan Bosworth Recruitment Specialists we don’t simply work for money. That would be a quick way to ‘come a cropper’. What we do is work hard at improving processes around ‘connecting’ the right candidate with the right employer with the least amount of distraction or discomfort for either party.
It is as simple as that.
Remove the ‘complication’ and get rid of the ‘noise’. Just be clear about your purpose, your goal, your reason and your motivation – and your work ethic will have the best chance of maturing into a ‘repetitive will to win’.
T: 0845 299 6369
E: Hello@JonothanBosworth.co.uk