Bronnie Ware is an Australian nurse who spent several years working in palliative care, caring for patients in the last 12 weeks of their lives. She recorded their dying epiphanies in a blog called Inspiration and Chai.
Unfortunately, one of the top 5 regrets most people have on their deathbed is, “I wish I didn’t work too hard” Why do people regret working too hard?
Simply because life is more than work, work and work. This blog post was not written to preach laziness. Instead, we wrote this blog post to show that life is more than work, work, and work.
In this blog post, we’ll be sharing with you 10 reasons you need to stop working hard. And by working hard, we mean working as if work is the only thing that matters.
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Hard work doesn’t lead to wealth
We want to work hard because we want to be wealthy. Unfortunately, most hard-working people are poor.
If working hard guarantees riches, then most people would have become millionaires, but it’s not so. Becoming rich at this age has more to do with how you use your brain than how you use your bones.
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Smart work is the new hard work
Many years ago, the strength of a man was measured by the joules of his muscle power. Not so anymore, more so in the areas that require the workings of powerful machines.
A woman who could use a grinding stone to break down wood would receive much more recognition in the days of old than in this present time, where different brands of electric blenders exist at affordable prices.
Smart work entails displaying some levels of cleverness and knowledge that help in tackling work efficiently. Planning work to be executed and completed within the time frame is also a way of working smart.
Delegating duties to capable people while playing the role of a supervisor brings out the beauty of working with cleverness. Using a less cumbersome but reliable method of solving problems exhibits an enviable example of working smart.
Smart work requires thinking beyond the status quo in order to turn around the laborious nature of carrying out tasks rigidly.
Only deep thinkers, solution strategists, and inquisitive minds are always in search of eliminating working hard. Now, has it made some sense to you?
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Your health is at a risk
The saying, “No risk, no venture” doesn’t apply to working too hard. It means that for every worthwhile goal to be achieved, there must be a decision to pursue it at all costs, but not at the expense of your health.
Statistics have it that a lot of people are under undue stress, and most have already broken under pressure with varying stress-related diseases to show for.
Indeed, the hustle and bustle accompanying working hard is laden with lifelong diseases affecting the heart, brain, kidneys, eyes, and hormones.
The health burden of stress-related conditions has become so overwhelming that policies on occupational health and safety in workplaces have gained a lot of popularity in implicating organizations that fail to take seriously the health and wellness of their employees.
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Better is quality than quantity
When one works extremely hard, there’s the tendency that the mind would go numb, and there appears routine and boredom in their finest forms. Before long, the quality of the products and services depletes.
The output may still be of the same quantity, but lacking in zest. The effort is channeled toward producing more with no break to reinvent ideas.
Many hard-working business owners have fallen into the rut of meeting deadlines supplying goods and services, and have less room for carrying out an objective market survey on ways to improve without waiting for complaints from their consumers.
Reviews, vacationing, brainstorming sessions, and customer service assessment are opportunities to upgrade the quality and match it with the corresponding quantity. Working hard isn’t one of the options.
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Hard work is a poor example of how to make a living
Children learn more through observation. Employees watch and play along. A parent or leader who has a life quote that “Hard work is more rewarding” is setting his observers up for failure. They will come to rely more on their school grades and physical efforts than on their abilities and skills.
As much as it is healthy to strive to make dreams come true, diversifying techniques on ways to bring ambitions to reality is a function of less flexing of muscles and rote learning, and more mind engagement and skills acquisition.
One of the challenges most countries are battling with is the heavy reliance on school certificates and qualifications as indicators of success in the labor market.
The boomeranging nature of such a poor representation of the human mind has led to a skyrocketing rush in unemployment as students struggle to work hard enough to pass school examinations in order to be approved of.
Those that cannot pass successfully resort to criminalizing their way through school and into offices where they become more of a nuisance than solution-bearers.
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Passion does not equal toiling
Working hard to achieve a set goal can make the idea of the passionate pursuit of dreams a term common to daydreamers.
But that is a huge misconception. A man who is passion-driven is always on the lookout for ways to become better at learning and character. He works toward being right for his interest, whilst patiently understudying successful people.
Toiling or working hard in this context is the situation whereby a man struggles to do everything by himself, as long as it is his brainchild, makes needless mistakes, and fails to achieve his aim.
He is too proud to model after successful people or delegate authority. He wants to start and finish all by himself.
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Hardworking people are proud of the wrong things
Most people are proud of getting things done by themselves. It’s useless. Learn how to be proud of the right things. Delegate authority and have some free time.
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Hard work may destroy your home
It is no more a tale that a good number of flourishing homes hit rock bottom as a result of staying away from home because work took the place of sharing and intimacy.
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It gives room for unhealthy competitions
Since people who work hard are self-seeking, they strive to use any means available to them to outshine their counterparts. Their trigger is to be recognized as “The Most Hardworking Person Of The Century.”
With such mindsets, there is always something to clamor for, and much bitterness to go around the organization. We’ll all do better if we compete in creativity than hard work.
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Hard work leads to an untimely death
Working too hard leads to eating poor meals and having poor health. This leads to an early grave. Is it really worth it?
Again, we’re not advocating laziness. Instead, we challenge you to consider what is important in life.
Yes, you need money, but nobody makes a lot of money by working 25 hours every day. People become rich because they think differently. What about your health? Your family? Work, but never let work be your life.
Thank you.