Today’s subject of this post is probably somewhat unintentionally misleading – I don’t think there’s anyone who LOVES doing something that’s hard work. There’s a reason it’s called “hard” work and that’s because it’s hard and not easy!
But most successful people have the capacity to view hard work as a means to an end and can appreciate the value of putting the effort in to get the outcome that they ultimately desire.
There are people like me who set aside an hour a day to write so that these posts get produced every single day.
There are people who never skip leg day at the gym because they want to have strong, shapely legs.
There are people that live on Instagram following people like Kim Kardashian and that Jenner clan because they like to make their brains squishy and useless.
It’s all about working hard for what you want.
But some people are action fakers – they talk about doing the hard work but really they don’t or they spend their time doing worthless activities and pretending like what they’re doing is work,
The classic example is the person who is trying to create a video training program and rather than hopping in front of the camera and delivering the content, they spend hours piss farting around with audio, backgrounds, lighting and setting up shots.
These people aren’t doing hard work, they’re pretending to, but they will tell you they are working like crazy and it’s their perfectionism that is holding them back.
Sorry, I call bullshit.
What’s going on here is, like I said, action faking.
They are talking about working hard and doing meaningless tasks to appear busy to other people and interestingly, maybe even themselves.
What do I mean by “maybe even themselves”?
I have a theory.
When you see people fussing around consistently with busy work but when you talk to them, they are convinced that they are doing the hard yards, what you’re witnessing is a form of subconscious procrastination which is a self-destructive behaviour.
But why?
I think it has to do with imposter syndrome.
In my lengthy experience with seeing people behave like this, almost every single one of them has a MUCH higher opinion of their ability than they’ve probably earned and they believe they are entitled to success.
But deep down, they know they’re pretenders. They know that they’re imposters.
So what do they do from becoming consciously aware of their own shortcomings and have to cope with that type of soul-crushing realization?
They waste time on things that don’t matter or deliver outcomes but they are things that appear “important” to someone that’s playing the game at a higher level.
We’ll go back to my example of the person fiddling around with getting their mic positions correct and perfect lighting.
If you were a super successful content producer churning out world-class videos, then production values like that are what make you stand out and above everyone else.
In essence, taking an extreme interest in these activities are important to the top 5% successful video content producers.
But to the person that’s producing nothing, has no audience and whose content is subpar, fooling around with sound and lighting is a great way to avoid putting stuff out into the market and discovering the truth about yourself.
And thus the lie perpetuates…
They convince themselves that they’re super details oriented and that they’re putting in the hard work all in the name of perfection, but the reality is, there are next to zero outputs of any tangible value.
Don’t be like this, be honest with yourself.
Pretending that you’re doing hard work and that you’re committed to being successful when you’re just tinkering away aimlessly isn’t good.
You need to lean in and have a red hot go. If you fail or you’re not good enough, then so be it, but failing because you’re convinced yourself you were doing the work when you really weren’t will always come back to bite you.