Working Smart for Fun and Profit
From the desk of Victor Pride
Date: Monday morning, July 1st time to get busy, time to get smart
Subj: Working hard vs. working smart
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Hard work is for suckers.
I said it and you read it.
I don’t work hard, I work smart and I work only for benefit.
Listen here, I’ve structured my life in such a way that I never spend time with people I don’t like. One of the many benefits of economic and geographical freedom.
But…
I do my work on the internet, which means I am forced to deal with some of the world’s dumbest people who don’t have a filter on their keyboard fingers.
One thing that really gets my goat is these silly motivational sayings, like “Do things because they’re hard” or smug shit talk like “What’s the matter, too hard for you?”.
Working hard doesn’t irk me, but this type of silliness is always vomited from the mouths of bullshitters. No-getters pretending to be go-getters. Losers talking down to other people and pretending they “work hard”.
Let me tell ya something, fellas, I don’t do anything just because it’s hard. “Hard work” is what people without a brain do or, usually, what lazy people say on the internet to feel big.
I did hard work one summer roofing houses and making minimum wage. That was hard and I won’t be doing that ever again. A year ago I ran a 12 mile Tough Mudder mud race in the middle of a Texas summer. That was hard and looking back there wasn’t a single benefit to doing it.
Now there is only one reason I do anything: Because there is a benefit. If it’s hard and there is no benefit I won’t do it. If it’s hard but the benefit is great I will do it.
Hard or easy makes no difference. What makes a difference is BENEFIT, but the reality is that most of the best things I’ve accomplished were actually quite easy.
Some of the greatest things I’ve done were just easy, peasy. I’ve made $45,000 dollars in a single day before. You know how hard I worked for it? I made a few phone calls, that’s it.
I had systems in place, you can bet I wasn’t sitting around foolin’ with video games and smoking dope, but I wasn’t doing anything hard. I had my systems in place and when opportunity came knocking I opened the door and let her in.
After getting your business set up it’s easy. It might seem hard at first, while you learn, but it quickly becomes easy. Things are only hard when you don’t know how to do them. Then they become easy.
But never confuse laziness with easiness. Laziness means doing nothing. Doing something that is easy and has a big benefit is what action takers do. I used to work a lot harder than I work now and I used to make about 1/4 of what I make now. I used to hate my job, that’s what made it hard and that’s why I didn’t make any money.
So if you’re like me you branch out, go your own way, give up the stupid “hard work” game and get to working smart. After you’ve put your plan into action, after you’ve put your business on auto-pilot easy things just happen to you.
So many times when my bank account was running low a deal would just fall into my lap. Again, I wasn’t foolin’ around with video games or watching TV, I was working, but I wasn’t doing anything hard.
I am telling you without a hint of pretending that money falls into your lap after you have put your systems in place, and it isn’t hard. I work from my home office. How hard is it sitting at my desk with my air conditioner going full blast while I look out over the pool? It isn’t hard at all.
Compared to the way most people live, my life is like a vacation. It does take time and effort to accomplish my goals but time and effort does not equal hard.
Here’s the silly thing, a lot of people are so stupid that they will choose to do nothing instead of doing something easy. They won’t make a change even though the change makes life easier.
Those Mexicans standing out in front of Home Depot at 5am hoping to be picked for day labor to make $15 bucks, that’s hard. Going to your shit job day in and day out to cover the bills is hard, putting up with your nagging wife and your spoiled kids is hard.
Living the life of a free man who makes his own money and rules is easy.
So I take the easy way out and I work smart.
Know what else I do?
I take shortcuts.
You know who doesn’t take shortcuts?
Dummies. “Stuck in a rutters”.
Years ago I would drive home from work at 5:30 in Dallas traffic. If you’ve ever been on I35 in Dallas at 5:30pm on a Monday evening you know it’s no place you want to be. Bumper to bumper to bumper traffic.
After sitting in this traffic enough times I decided to stop being stupid and I got out a map and planned a shortcut going through this street and that street all the way home. I took my drive home from an hour down to a half hour.
I see dummies on the internet saying shortcuts are bad, that’s why those dummies don’t have a pot to piss in. They prefer to “work for what they have”, which is nothing. They’ll talk about the virtues of hard work in the same sentence talking about how hard it is to pay bills “these days”.
How many times have you read in the news “He worked so hard all his life and died with nothing“? I’ve read that a million times.
Listen carefully, there is working hard and there is working smart. Working hard is for the everyday Joe. Working smart is for the man who takes the time to look at all options and pick the best option that provides the most benefit. Easy? Hard? Who gives a shit. The benefit is what matters.
Follow the rules, or follow the benefits. One or the other.
I have chosen to follow the benefits. I don’t give two cents if something is hard or easy, if it’s beneficial I’ll do it and if it’s easy that’s all the better.
I used to follow the rules and work hard (for someone else’s benefit), it never worked out too well for me. I used to have bills up to my eyeballs, I used to have the body of a slob, I used to go through a new girl every week and each of them were alcoholic party girl slobs who couldn’t cook a piece of toast and cried about having to clean the kitchen once every three weeks.
Now I’ve got money in the bank, freedom of location, the body of a greek god and a little 20 year old shy girl who loves to cook and clean, follows my every command like it was gospel and does it all with the world’s biggest smile.
It takes time, it takes effort, what it doesn’t take is “hard work”. Doing hard work is the same thing as doing something you don’t like to do.
Hell, “hard work” can be replaced with one single word to be more accurate. That word is tedious. You’ve got to do a lot of tedious things to become successful. And that’s a lot easier than roofing houses.
Mindset of a winner or mindset of a worker bee. Every single day I see people working their fingers to the bone doing hard work, that isn’t anything I’d wish for the readers of Bold and Determined, the Website for Winners ™.
You’ve got to stay busy, you’ve got to be building, but that just isn’t hard. A lot of things seem hard when you start. That’s called learning.
After you’ve learned how to do math it stops being hard, doesn’t it? You’ll say “That’s all you have to do? Wow. That’s really easy“. And it is easy.
But hey, what do I know? Anonymous commenters on the internet with a hundred bucks in their bank account and a hundred extra lbs on their body think telling you to work hard will help you get it all.
Yeah, OK. Good luck.
Those boys can work hard. I’ll be busy working smart.
See you next time,
-Victor Pride