Getting After It

106 — How to Do Hard Work: Lessons from Paul Graham

• Brett Rossell • Season 4 • Episode 106

Share episode

Send us a text

In this solo episode, we’re tackling one of the most critical principles for success—hard work. If you’ve ever wondered how to actually work hard in a way that moves the needle, this episode is for you.

Inspired by Paul Graham’s essay How to Do Hard Work, we break down what separates those who get after it from those who stay stagnant. We explore why hard work is often misunderstood and how to apply it effectively in your career, fitness, and personal growth.

Here’s what we cover:

  • Why most people misunderstand what real hard work looks like
  • The three pillars of great work (talent, practice, and effort)
  • Why motivation is overrated and discipline is everything
  • The biggest reasons people avoid hard work (and how to overcome them)
  • How to find work that fuels you so you don’t burn out
  • The truth about success—working hard is non-negotiable, but working on the right things is the real game-changer

We’re getting real in this one. No shortcuts, no hacks—just the reality of what it takes to push your limits, break past comfort, and achieve what you’re truly capable of.

–––––––––––––––––-

Website: Keepgettingafterit.com
Follow on X: @bcrossell
Subscribe on YouTube: @gettingafteritpodcast
Follow on Instagram: @bcrossell
Follow on TikTok: gettingafterit_podcast

I hope today’s episode sparked something within you to pursue your dreams and unlock your true potential. If you found value in it, consider sharing it with someone who might need that same push.

This podcast is built for you—the dreamers and the doers. My goal is to provide a space where you can find inspiration, learn from others, and feel empowered to chase what matters most to you.

Your dreams are within your grasp. All you need is the commitment to Get After It.

Brett:

Welcome back to the show. My friends, this is the Getting After Podcast, and we are talking about something that is critical for anything you want to get after in life, and it's the concept of hard work. I'm going to teach you how to do it, how to work hard, and what that looks like in whatever pursuit you're going after. So let's get into it. Today, we're diving into a topic that separates the great from the average, the successful from the stagnant and the fulfilled from the regretful, and that is how to do hard work.

Brett:

I found an essay by Paul Graham, who is one of my favorite writers. He actually, to give you some context into who he is, paul Graham is an entrepreneur, a programmer, an essayist and a venture capitalist, so he co-founded Y Combinator, which is a startup incubator in Silicon Valley, and they launched companies like Airbnb, dropbox, stripe and Reddit, and he writes these essays about businesses, about startups, about work ethic and ambition of some of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world, and so it's really interesting hearing him write these essays or, I guess, reading the essays and learning what other entrepreneurs who have high work ethic and who have these habits that make them successful in their realm, and just hearing his perspective. It's really interesting because he pretty much sees these founders come in. He helped launch Airbnb he was the person behind that, backing it like his company and so he's seen all these different people who are tenacious and are relentless and know how to work hard and have different skills and different work ethics and they use those skills differently. But he's seen a lot and he's compiled these into an essay, and one of his essays is called how to do hard work. It's one of my favorite ones I've read by him so far. There's a lot in there that I suggest you go and read if you want to just learn how to find things that you're passionate about, what it means to find things that you can work hard on and how that affects your life in a positive way, because there are a ton of benefits from working hard on things that you enjoy. We'll go into some of the nuances of hard work because it's as simple as it might seem.

Brett:

Working hard gets overcomplicated these days and in many ways People don't either know what to work on like heart. They don't know how to work hard on the thing that they're they're doing that's in front of them, or they're not working hard on the right things. They're just putting time in at work, which might be the only thing that you can do at the moment. But, like, working hard also means finding ways to work on your passions, and we'll get into that now. But I'm going to read some things from this essay and then provide my thoughts and we'll go into some of the things.

Brett:

But I know what you might be thinking right now Like I already know how to work hard, like I just need to put in the hours, I need to grind, I need to push through. It's all the things I talk about. Right, that's not necessarily true. It's like with consistency. If you go back and listen to the podcast I did about six episodes ago, I talked about how consistency is important because without it, you're not going to be making any progress towards your goals. But if you're consistently doing the wrong things, then that's even going to put you further away from accomplishing that goal, and so you have to understand and be brutally honest with yourself about what you're being consistent on and if it actually is the right path for you. So that is part of it. Like all those things with putting in the hours, the grind and pushing through, that is part of working hard, but what I think could be the case is that we're all thinking about how to work hard wrong. We're all thinking about working hard wrong. We all get, like I said, overcomplicated with it.

Brett:

So there's about five things I pulled from this essay, five different topics, that I want to just go into. But first is why most people misunderstand hard work. Second is the three pillars of great work. Three is how to build sustainable, sustainable discipline. Fourth is why motivation is overrated. And then fifth is how to find work that keeps you engaged for the long haul, because patience is critical in this. Like you have to understand delayed gratification, and we'll get into that. But I want to talk about the reality of hard work. Let's start with the fundamental truth. If you want to do great things, you will have to work very hard, and I mean really hard, anything you want to do in life. When I think about anything that I've done that I'm proud of, there's a lot of hard work behind it, and the same goes for you.

Brett:

Paul Graham admits that as a kid he wasn't sure this was true. He saw through some famous adults achieving great things and thought well, maybe there's a way to succeed through pure talent alone. But over time he realized that there wasn't. And I think some people make it look very easy like behind the scenes. They're putting in so much work that you don't see, and that's how it looks easy to you.

Brett:

And in the essay, paul Graham talks about how Bill Gates, in his 20s, never took a day off. Think about that. For 10 years Bill Gates never took a day off. Think about that For 10 years Bill Gates never took a day off. He was always working hard. He was trying to refine his products and he was trying to make a name for himself in the computer industry. And he didn't take a day off in his 20s. But also think about Lionel Messi. Messi who his coaches? They never talk about his talent. They always talk about how relentless he was in his dedication to training. And the only reason I know that is because my dad is a huge argentina fan, so shout out to todd for that.

Brett:

But I want to kill that myth right now that there's no shortcut, there is no cheat code and there's no hack. You cannot escape the requirement of effort that is necessary for anything that you achieve, and I mean like. I'm not going to give you another example about running, because I feel like I talk about that all the time. But a good example I've been thinking about a lot is career. Like whatever career that you're in, like, there's always ways that you can get better, refine your, your knowledge and work on your skills, because evidently that's the most important thing for sustainability in any job is just refining your skills. You have to figure out a way that you cannot be replaceable and for me that looks like I'm trying to become the best that I can be in. Whatever I'm trying to do, if that's running, if it's podcasting, if it's working and doing sales, if it's being a better husband, like all those things require effort, all of them require hard work. But you have to learn how to work on the right things hard and you have to figure out what matters and spend time doing that. So think about that. The reality of hard work is that it's not going away. Hard work will never go away. If you want to achieve greatness, if you want to get after life and and learn that you are capable of doing more, it's going to require hard work. There's no getting around it. So that's point number one.

Brett:

So let's talk about the three pillars of great work for a second, paul Graham. He identifies these three things that you need for what he considers exceptional work with um, again, anything that you're doing in life. But what are those three pillars? He breaks it down. The first is natural ability. So he talked about that a little bit how, like, there's some people who are blessed with talent, some things will come easier to others than they do to yourself, and that's okay. Like, you have talents that other people don't and people have talents that you don't. But what's great about that is it kind of eagles out for everyone, unless it's like specific fields. But everyone has a talent that someone else doesn't and everyone has skills that someone else doesn't. And you have to understand what your strengths are and learn if, if you can refine any certain process of your um, like whatever you want to try and work on a little bit better. But identify what your natural ability is, if it's talking to people, if it's athleticism, whatever it is, figure out what you're good at naturally.

Brett:

The second is practice, and that is you can look at that as the repetitions you put in daily. So for me in my job it's cold calls, it's calls with clients. In my fitness it's running lifting, like all those things right, but it requires daily repetitions and practice. You can say is also a different form of consistency, but that is a similar thing. You're just doing the same thing over and over again, which is how you refine skills. That's how you get better at the thing that you're trying to do.

Brett:

My wife shout out to her, she's painting a picture right now. Do my wife shout out to her she's painting a picture right now and up to this point she hasn't necessarily like branched out and tried to really paint a picture that captures, like how she views certain things. Right Up to this point she's just drawn and painted and made these little like, little cartoon paintings or things like that that aren't necessarily like they're not bad at all, like I love them. But she wants to do more like photorealistic paintings and so she's trying that. And you know she always tells me, sorry, ali, but she always tells me she's like man, like this is not good, like I'm so embarrassed by this and I'm like, babe, it looks amazing. And then I always remind her like you have, you're not going to be an expert at the beginning.

Brett:

Like the more repetitions you put in, the better you'll become as a painter. It's the same process for any skill you want to get better at, like you have to put in the repetitions, you have to make time for it and you have to put in that effort, which is the third pillar that Paul Graham talks about, because effort is the drive to push past what is comfortable. So Paul Graham notes that you can do pretty well with just two of those things either natural ability and effort, natural ability and practice, or practice and effort Like. You can do well with two of those things, but to be truly great you need all three. You need all three of those bad boys. And he brought up the example of Michael Jordan how he wasn't just talented, like, yes, he had natural ability, but he was also the hardest worker on the team. Go watch the Last Dance or read the book Relentless if you don't believe me. But everyone says that Michael Jordan would always outwork them in practice in the games, and it's so he could perform his best. So he had that natural ability, but he knew that was a strength and so he refined it, he worked and doubled down on it and made sure that he was doing all he could to become the best player that he could be.

Brett:

And here's the takeaway from this section about the pillars. One is you can't control how much talent you're born with. So if you're telling yourself a sad story of man, that person is just a born runner. Like, if you're making excuses like that, you don't want to bad enough, like the fact that people have talent. Yes, that's true, but you have skills, and skills can be refined, which becomes talent. Right, it's like you can make it look easy. The second takeaway is you can control how much you practice. That's in your control as well. And the last is that you can control how much effort you put in every single day. So the first you can't really control With finding your natural ability. You just have to learn about yourself. You have to figure out where you have like strengths and where you're weak, and then work on those weaknesses but refine the strengths.

Brett:

Now, why do most people not work hard? Why do they avoid it? Well, first it's hard, it sucks Sometimes. Hard work is not pleasant. Most people don't work as hard as they think they do as well, and myself included in that. I think we all like to believe that we're working a little bit harder than we think, and there could be three reasons why people don't work hard. One, I think, is the lack of external pressure, because in school and in work those are technically structured, like you have a certain task that you have to get done, whether it's homework or you have to get a report sent over to your boss, whatever it is Like there's certain things that are done, but it's structured, but in real life no one's holding you accountable. No one's going to be tapping on your shoulder at five in the morning saying, hey, get up, let's go to the gym, let's go. No one's going to tap you on the shoulder when you're lifting weights and say, hey, why don't you push a little harder? Unless you have a coach. But no one's gonna be doing that for you. And so you have to learn personal accountability. You have to figure out how you can hold yourself accountable to the goals and to the routines and the tasks that you set before yourself.

Brett:

The other thing, I think, is lying to yourself. People often say that they're too busy, or they confuse busyness with productivity, which, again, I do the same thing, like if I feel like I'm working hard at work and I just have a lot that I need to get done, like I often think, oh yeah, I'm working hard, I'm doing well and I'm busy, so I must be productive. Oftentimes that's not the case. Oftentimes, busyness is a sign that time management might be an issue. That might be a hard truth to hear, but really that's the case. And that might be a hard truth to hear, but really that's the case is you're either putting things off or you're not spending all the time that you say you are doing, the work, that you are in the given moment that you are. So like it's, it's a, it's a cycle and I would just say, be honest about yourself. Like, take that internal audit. See if you are working hard in some areas or if you're just busy for the sake of being busy. See if there's ways that you can cut it, cut out, you know, tasks that aren't um, they're not urgent, or if you can delegate, like whatever it is. See if you can get rid of some of that busyness because that's going to free up time for you to work hard on the things that you want to and that might be, you know, just getting rid of the small things in your, your day that just take up a lot of time and meetings, whatever it is. Like figured out and just be honest.

Brett:

The last one I would say like and Graham brings this up it's the fear of failure, like it's easier to avoid real work than it is to risk failing at it. If you just avoid doing it, then, yeah, you never risk the failure which you know. Some people don't want a life where they have to push themselves, and that's fine. Everyone's going to be different. Everyone has their own agency to choose how they want to live. But my guess is that if you're listening to this podcast, you're looking to grow, and oftentimes we all know what we need to do to grow, but many times we're scared to fail at that because it's uncertain, and fear of uncertainty is a real thing. Fear is only a mile wide, but it's an inch deep. Once you step into it you're like, hey, this is not as bad as I thought.

Brett:

And really, if the fear of failure is what's holding you back, I would ask you this how do you expect to spend the rest of your life? Do you want to do it only in fear, or do you want to use this finite time we have on this earth to go try and push yourself in an area that you're a little scared of? Because the story of that, the story of someone going and achieving something great like that and standing in the gaze of risk and standing in the eye of failure but still pushing forward. It shows courage, it shows that you're wanting to get better and it shows that you know, whatever happens, you're okay with the outcome because at least you're giving it a shot. And what I expect you learn through that, through that experience, is just you realize it's not as bad as you thought it was and that you can do more than you originally thought. Like. That's one great thing that working hard will teach you is that you're capable of doing so much more. It's an amazing thing.

Brett:

And there's this quote from Paul Graham from this essay, where he says you have to learn not to lie to yourself, not to procrastinate and not to get distracted. If you're constantly saying I don't have time, let me ask you how much time did you spend scrolling today? If you're saying I'm working hard, let me ask you what real progress have you made this week? The point is to be brutally honest with yourself, and I think those are good questions to ponder. Like, if you say I don't have time, yeah, how much time are you scrolling a day? Or I'm working hard. Well, what real progress have you made every week and what does that look like? Have you been defining that?

Brett:

It's one of the reasons why I talk about how journaling is is critical, and my brother and I we actually have a weekly call where we will talk about our goals and then hold each other accountable for it. But the thing is is like that only works because both of us are invested in that and we are holding each other accountable because we want to be like. We want to get a different perspective and be like hey, these are the things that I'm trying to accomplish. Here's where I missed this week, here's what I'm trying to do better next week. And then, you know, drew or myself might have a perspective that's like hey, well, why don't you spend more time doing X or whatever? That is Because I think having someone that holds you accountable and helps you reach your goals is a huge, huge benefit. But the only reason we're able to do that call is because we track our progress throughout the week, and I also track my progress in my own personal journal, which I suggest you do the same, because it shows you that you are working on the right things and if you're not, it's going to show that as well. Um, so be brutally honest with yourself as you're auditing your hard work.

Brett:

Another key point that I want to talk about, which Paul Graham discusses, is motivation versus discipline. Motivation is unreliable. Paul Graham talks about that, how it will come and go. Trying hard doesn't mean this is from him trying hard doesn't mean constantly pushing yourself. Once you start rolling, momentum carries you forward, and so motivation will be there in the beginning, like you're going to feel all fired up, and I think that's because it's a very novel thing, right? Like humans are attracted to novelty. If it's something that's new, if it's something that's shiny, we get excited about it for a little bit. Once that excitement wears off, then it's a different story, and that's when motivation becomes unreliable and you have to focus more on discipline, because when it's easy, everyone can be motivated. When you're sore, when you're exhausted and when life gets hard, that's when most people quit.

Brett:

So track your progress Like. This is how you. You focus on discipline rather than motivation. One, I think you track your progress. You have to see you're making small wins on a on a regular basis, and this next one is a huge game changer. It's surrounding yourself with people who work hard, because you become your environment, you adapt to it, and a story that I'll tell, for this is is when I first moved up to Utah, I came to a company called pattern and it was uh, uh, a startup at the time of uh, man, nine years.

Brett:

They were man nine years. They were around for nine years. When I first joined we just celebrated the 12th year. But when I first joined I could tell it was like a different place. It was a very intense environment in a good way, like everyone was pushing each other to be a little bit better. There was competition, which was good, and everyone seemed to be very smart, smarter than myself. So I knew I kind of was in a good place If I was not the smartest person in the room, if the goals that were in front of me were hard to achieve.

Brett:

And so I learned very quickly from the people around me what it meant to work hard, because I showed up with a whole different idea of what it meant to work hard. But I showed up with a whole different idea of what it meant to work hard. But then I would see people who were just grinding it out nonstop, every single day and saw some real results from that work, and I knew if I needed, if I wanted to produce similar results, I would have to do similar work and I'd have to put myself out there and push myself a little harder. And so surrounding yourself with people who work hard, I think, doesn't necessarily motivate you, but maybe inspires you is a better word to use there it inspire you to to want to work harder. If you're sitting around being surrounded by a bunch of people who lack work ethic and who are trying to find the easy path all the time, you probably will do the same thing. You'll probably gravitate towards more of the easier decisions than the harder choices that you know you need to make if you want to reach your goals. Again, it requires being honest with yourself, but I will tell you this that when you do that, it's going to increase your own discipline.

Brett:

Allie and I we just recorded a podcast yesterday and we started talking about some of the lessons that we've learned from marriage, and pretty much the conversation got around to how Allie brings out the best in me in many ways, because I want to be the best husband, I want to provide a good lifestyle for us and all these different things and I want to be present, and that requires me to work in different ways and to work hard, but the results are the best, because it means I have a strong marriage and I have a great relationship with my wife and she's someone who I want to spend all my time with. But it comes from choosing the hard choices. So like being with her means I'm not going to be on my phone, I'm going to be with her and all these different rules that we have, not necessarily like written rules, but unspoken rules in our marriage, where it's like when we're together, we're together and that's what matters. And so all I'm saying is that she's brought out the best in me because I surround myself with her every single day and I work hard and I try to be my best because of her, and the same can go for me. I'm not saying you have to get married. I'm just saying like there is a powerful influence, for when you surround yourself with people who work hard, discipline beats motivation.

Brett:

Every time I will say that Because, like even when I most days, guys, I don't want to go to the gym. Because, like, even when I most days, guys, I don't want to go to the gym and I know it's crazy to say, because I always talk about the benefits of like oh man, every time I go to the gym I feel better. Every time I work out, like I sweat out a good, good workout or I have a nice run, my day just goes smoother. So why would I have a hard time getting to the gym? Well, same reason you do because I'm comfortable in my bed. I don't want to get up from the side of my wife. I don't want to have to wake up early and go do something that's hard in the first thing in the morning. But I know the results that come from it are phenomenal and I have to rely on discipline when that motivation is not there because, again, it's not there most days, I'd say 80% of the time I struggle with motivation I have to rely on my discipline. It's a muscle that strengthens the more that you work. It. It happens over time.

Brett:

But, paul Graham, like he says, once you start rolling, momentum carries you forward. That momentum that he's talking about is discipline, because you see the results and then you want to keep going and you want to keep getting better and you want to see where this road takes you. So work on your discipline. That's one of the best ways that you can learn how to work hard. How do you find work that fuels you? Well, let me tell you, it's easier to work hard if you love the game, but it's way harder to work hard if you despise it. There's this quote from Mike Tyson where he says do what you hate, but do it like you love it. That's discipline. But anyways, that doesn't really apply to what we're going into here. How do you find work that fuels you? Well, paul Graham says a deep interest in the topic makes people work harder than any amount of discipline.

Brett:

Can I want you to pause for a second? What is one thing that you love? It could be a hobby, it could be a TV show, I don't, I don't care. But what's one thing that you love? Cause that could tell you, that could give you some direction to pursue either a career path, a job, or hobbies yourself? Like, ask yourself what you love to do, do? I think it's also worth asking yourself for, whatever you're doing, like, are you doing it for money or status, or because you actually love it, like this podcast, money and status are not even a thought for this thing because, like, if I was doing it for money and status, I would have quit way long ago. So why do I keep doing this? Well, one, I enjoy it. It's a education for myself that I don't think I could get anywhere else. Like, I'm going and I'm learning things about discipline, hard work, consistency from historical figures and from people who come on the show and tell their stories. Like, that's how I learn and that's the reason why I love this game. It's a hard game to play. Like, podcasting is a production and you have to be consistent if you want that momentum to keep building.

Brett:

And so another question to ponder is if money was not an issue, would you still be doing whatever you're doing today? If the answer is no, I think that's a sign that you might need to just take a step back and pause and reflect on your life, not in like an existential, like oh, I'm having a midlife crisis, I hate doing what I'm doing. Don't do that. Instead, use it as an opportunity to be like okay, well, my time on earth is finite. Is this what I want to do for the rest of my life? Is there something I could add to this that would make my life more fulfilled and more meaningful. All good questions Ask yourself in that process. Be brutally honest. Don't sugarcoat anything. You should never be a liar to yourself or to anyone. Don't be a liar. I thought this was interesting.

Brett:

He brought up the idea of Isaac Newton, so Paul Graham talked about his story, which I didn't know much about. But Newton spent his life bouncing around between physics, alchemy and theology. He wasn't called to just one thing. He had to find it through exploration. And if you haven't found work that excites you, that's okay. But the key is to keep searching. Never think that you're stuck in a pigeonhole, whatever the phrase is. Always find opportunities to grow and try to be the best that you can. Like it's okay to search for things that you still want to do. Like, I don't think I've found everything that I'm interested in. I'm only 27. And I'm always trying to find things that I want to learn about and things that I want to go and do. So the same goes for you. Always keep searching.

Brett:

I want to talk about the truth, about success here, because, paul Graham, his biggest lesson is that success isn't just about working hard, it's about working on the right things. And he brings up the point of Warren Buffett. Warren Buffett doesn't make thousands of stock trades. He's not out there as a day trader. He makes a few smart, strategic bets and I think that's a very smart thing to think about. For a second, warren Buffett, one of the wealthiest, one of the best investors in history, isn't out there making these drastic decisions and huge trades all the time. He's invested so much in Coke and now he's one of the majority shareholders in Coke, I believe and he's just played the long game. He's been patient and he's understood that delayed gratification brings huge results, which is another point with the truth about success that I want you to understand is delayed gratification is a huge piece of it.

Brett:

You have to understand that there's going to be times when you don't see any movement on the needle of progress and you're going to have to spend weeks, months and sometimes years doing the same thing over and over again, with no results. But the thing is, if you're interested in it, if it brings you fulfillment, if it brings you meaning, those are the results themselves. If it makes you happier, keep doing it. But also, hard work is not glamorous all the time. Hard work is brutal and there's going to be times when you want to avoid it, and there's going to be times when you don't see the results for so long that you question whether or not you should keep on this path.

Brett:

I've questioned myself a lot with this podcast Because I'll listen to others out there and I realize that I am a novice. Compared to them, I'm just a little tadpole and they're a huge toad. That was a horrible analogy. I'm sorry for that one, but it's there. Like I feel like I'm in the high school sports team. I'm on the high school sports team and people like Chris Williamson, joe Rogan those guys, they're in the NFL and in order to get to their level, I have to just keep working hard. And the thing is is like I brought up the point that there's going to be times when you just see no progress.

Brett:

But the key that I want to, that I want to focus on there, is you just have to have a vision and if you believe that your efforts are aligning with that vision, hold on to that belief and be okay with the delayed gratification Because, excuse me, I think we've done a huge disservice to ourselves with how readily available everything is to us nowadays, like fast food you can order it now and it's at your door. Same with Amazon It'll drop stuff off. You don't really have to leave your house if you want to just live. It's crazy. Same with streaming Everything is at our fingertips and we have access to so much stuff. It's another muscle that you have to work at is learning how to delay your gratification. How to be proud of the work that you have to work at is learning how to delay your gratification. How do you be proud of the work that you're doing without losing motivation?

Brett:

Winston Churchill has a quote that goes along the lines of something like just voice crack there. But he has a quote that says success is going from failure to failure without the lack of motivation. And so I'm not saying that you're going to fail, but maybe in that sense I would say success is the ability to go from day to day without the lack of progress and hold on to that, but keep the momentum rolling, because that's how you build something great. And the more that you work hard on one thing, the better you're going to get at it. Um, and Paul Graham. He also says this you work hard on one thing, the better you're going to get at it. And Paul Graham he also says this hard work matters, but strategy just as much. It matters. Just as much.

Brett:

Strategy is critical. It's like what I was just talking about. You have to have a vision for yourself and strategic thinking is thinking in advance and trying to set yourself up to get to whatever circumstance you want to end, and so you have to have a strategy for what you're doing. You have to have a strategy for your, your work efforts, for your practice, your consistency and a strategy to use your natural ability to get you there. Like it is important to have a strategy.

Brett:

Like I I nerd moments can come out, but I love the game civilization. The whole point of civilization is you're supposed to create a thriving civilization pretty much has domination over the world. Or, if you want to play it diplomatically, you can make allies with other countries and pretty much just create a civilization. That's really it. But the key point and anytime you start a game in civilization, so you have to have in Civilization is you have to have a strategy. Like do you want to be a warlord and just conquer the entire planet? Or do you want to be diplomatic? Do you want to focus more on tech? Like there's all these different strategies you can take to build a sustainable, long-lasting civilization in this game, and you have to decide what your strategy is in the beginning, because otherwise you're just going to be making decisions for the case of making decisions for the sake of making decisions, and the same goes for your life. Throw that nerdy analogy aside. You have to have a strategy and a vision for where you want to get to, because that will dictate what your decisions are, and what you focus on dictates your decisions. So focus on the goal, focus on the vision, the life that you have in mind for yourself, and just take one step to get there.

Brett:

One quote from Paul Graham that I love is some of the best work is done by people who find an easy way to do something hard. I think that's pretty spot on Because, like I was saying, with like delayed gratification, a reason so many of those people are successful, like Jeff Bezos, like whoever invented DoorDash, all those guys I don't know but it's because they took something that was hard. Like you had to get up If you wanted to get some Q-tips, you had to go to the store and get it, but now you could just order on Amazon and it's there the same day If you wanted to go get some Tacotips, you had to go to the store and get it, but now you can just order on amazon and it's there the same day. If you wanted to go get some taco bell, you had to get in your car and go get it. You know, back in the day you'd have to walk inside, which is even an extra step. But now all that hard work's done, you can just have it straight to your door. Airbnb same thing like book a place, go find it, you're good. But it's just crazy because, like all these different things that have been historically hard, like going to get groceries or going to to get food, going to find a hotel and booking it, and like all these things are now so easy for us.

Brett:

And so paul graham's pretty much saying like some of the best work is making complicated problems easy, um, easy to solve. And I want you like are there things in your life that you're overcomplicating, that you can work hard on, to improve and to make a little bit easier? And that could be in your relationship, which could look like more communication, more spending time asking one another how they feel and asking your partner for advice, or in your career, it could be finding a way to get your emails down to zero faster. It could be using a software to help keep yourself organized, I don't know, but the thing is is like once you figure out what the problem is and then try to come up with the most simple solution for solving it. That's where a lot of the great work is done and that's the point Paul Graham's trying to make.

Brett:

But here's the bottom line this is the final closeout that I want you to remember from this podcast is working hard is a non-negotiable. You cannot achieve anything great in this life without working hard. But working on the right things is the real game changer, and this comes from understanding what your talents are, understanding what problem you're trying to solve and working hard on that. Work on the right things. Try to simplify other areas of your life and be brutally honest with yourself and ask yourself on a consistent basis are you really putting in the effort? Are you doing what you say you are? If you take nothing else from this episode, remember this the more you push your limits, the more they expand. So push them. That's a non-negotiable, too. Getting after it is always about pushing your limits. It's about seeing how far you can get, reaching that milestone and seeing if you can push it just a little bit further next time. Your limits are only a construct of the mind, and that sounds so cliche to say Like I hate that, I just said that, but it really is true Like your mind holds you back in a lot of ways, but it can also propel you forward if used correctly. And so push your limits and work hard on doing that. Get uncomfortable.

Brett:

Growth doesn't happen in the comfort zone. The other night I was journaling and I actually wrote about that just a little bit, and I just want to share this one part from it. Um, just to let you think. So here it is. You can't expect to grow without clinging Sorry, let me start over there you can't expect to grow while clinging to comfort and you can't expect comfort while pursuing real growth, and I want you just to think about that. Think about if there's areas in your life that you're not working as hard as you would like and, if that's the case, figure out what you need to do to make more time for that thing, and then work hard, like the best things that have ever happened to me in my life come from working hard. That's just what you should be doing Like you're cut out for more than you think. I always thought I was this kid who was just average until I started working hard and I realized that wasn't the case, and the same can go for you. Like, apply yourself just a little bit more and see what happens.

Brett:

I appreciate everyone for listening to this episode. I uh, I hope it didn't, you know, turn anyone off or scare anyone from working hard. But that really is just. The reality of goals is, if you want to achieve your goals, you're going to have to work hard towards them and you're going to have to learn how to work on the right things. So until next episode, everyone share this with someone who needs that little extra push and get after it yourself, because you're capable of more than you ever think. And I'll say that till the day I die. And until the next episode, everyone keep getting after it. Thanks, guys.