All worthwhile achievements are amenable to hard work.
Nothing will bring you to the attention of your
superiors faster than your developing a reputation for being a hard
worker. People who are in a position to help you advance in your career
will always be impressed by your willingness to work harder and longer
than anyone else.
In Dr. Thomas Stanley's study of affluent Americans,
The Millionaire Next Door, he reports that almost every one of the
self-made millionaires he interviewed told him that their success was
due more to hard work than to any other factor. In America, you work
forty hours per week for survival. If all you work is forty hours, all
you earn is enough to survive. You tread water and you basically stay
even. But you don't get very far ahead and you never achieve the kind of
success that is possible for you.
Every hour you put in over forty, either on your job
or on yourself, improving your knowledge and skills, is an investment in
your success, in your future. You can tell where you are going to be in
three to five years with unerring accuracy by simply looking at the
number of hours over forty that you are working each week.
The average workweek for both executives and
small-business owners in America is approximately fifty-eight to
fifty-nine hours. Many successful men and women work seventy and eighty
hours per week during the critical formative states of their careers.
The first corollary of the Law of Applied Effort is
All great success is preceded by a long period of hard, hard work in a
single direction toward a clearly defined purpose.
You must continually ask yourself, What am I trying to
do? And how am I trying to do it? It is not enough just to work hard or
to work long hours. You must be working on high-value task and
activities aimed toward the accomplishment of meaningful and important
goals.
The second corollary of this law is
The harder you work, the luckier you get.
It seems that your ability to work very, very hard
will open up the doors of opportunity for you and will bring to your
assistance all manner of people and resources that you could not have
imagined would come your way. Your commitment to hard work creates a
force field of positive energy around you that attracts positive people
and greater opportunities into your life.
The third corollary of the Law of Applied Effort is
To achieve more than the average person, you must work longer and harder
than the average person.
This is simply a way of restating the fact that you
can get more out of life only if you put more into life. And the more
you put in, the more you will get out. The Law of Cause and Effect is
absolute. You will invariably reap what you sow, and if you sow more,
you will eventually reap more.
How you can apply this law immediately:
1. Resolve today that from now on you are going to
work longer and harder than anyone else. How could you organize your
life so you could start a little earlier, work a little harder and stay
a little later? For example, by starting just one hour before the
others, working at lunchtime, and staying one hour later, you can carve
out three extra hours of productive time each day.
One hour of focused, uninterrupted work time will give
you the equivalent of two to three hours of normal, interrupted working
time during the day. Your productivity will double and so will your
value. And by coming in a little earlier and staying a little later, you
will avoid most of the traffic!
2. Begin today to organize your days and your weeks so
that you put in forty-five, fifty, or even sixty hours per week. You
will be amazed at how easy it is to create this extra time, and you will
very quickly come to the attention of the people who can help you get
ahead, without your having to say a word.
More than anything, work all the time you work! Don't
waste time in idle chatting with coworkers, personal telephone calls,
long coffee breaks, and extended lunch hours. When you work, work! Put
your head down and make every minute count. When you come in early or
stay late, get right to work, without delay. Work on high-value tasks.
Avoid time-wasting conversations. Socialize on your own time. Remember,
people are watching.