Why nobody needs to know that you are a hard worker
By Elliot Chan, Opinions Editor
You think you work hard. Well guess what? Nobody cares. Nobody cares how hard you work. People care if you get the work done or not. How hard you work is your business, and even then it’s just your own perception of yourself, and we know how often that is flawed.
It’s a competitive world out there and hard work doesn’t go unnoticed. However, when you start advertising your efforts as if what you’re doing is so much more significant than everybody else, you are putting a target on your back. You think announcing your hard work will get you praise, but rarely is that the case. Telling someone you’ve worked hard, even if you did, is like a pretty skinny person telling you that they are attractive. On the other hand, if you tell someone that you’ve worked hard and they found flaws in your project, then don’t you look like an idiot?
Wanting people to know that you’ve spent significant time on something is natural. We live in an age where sharing information—regardless of how mundane—is as normal as sharing an elevator. But when you are telling people that you work hard all the time, what you convey is that you are stressed out and under pressure all the time. Many people see hard working people, not as inspiring, but as pitiful. They have to work harder, because they suck at what they are doing. Other people with the same job and same assignment as you are getting it done with ease, but here you are, working hard. Pfft! Don’t make a job sound hard; make a job sound enjoyable and painless.
You might think that your boss wants you to work hard, but that’s not true. Your boss wants you to bite off what you can chew and swallow it well. The Canadian workforce loses $16.6 billion a year in sick days. Keeping you healthy and working consistently is better than having you breaking your back and winding up out of commission. Working recklessly doesn’t impress anyone, not even the person paying you to do so.
If you work hard, the product will speak for itself, and nobody will ever be able to take it away from you. It’s true—sometimes, hard work doesn’t pay off immediately. You can play a great game and still lose. But if you are genuinely putting in the effort, with a set goal in mind, you are not after the praise. You probably don’t even care what other people think. You want to do your best. How you get to your accomplishment doesn’t matter, the key is that you get there.
