Hard Work Isn't Necessary

What is Hard Work?

We should first tackle what it means to work. We might consider work to be anything that is in some way productive. Productivity is basically every step in the process of reaching some goal, as long as that goal requires some amount of effort. In order to maintain a reasonable definition for work, we have to include a minimum level of effort as a means of precluding trivially simple tasks. This, of course, creates the problem of having to decide what the theoretical minimum work effort ought to be, but I don't think we can directly measure effort anyway, so we will keep it vague.

As humans, our entire psychology is based on an inherent hierarchy of values that guides our behaviour. As an example, when you are hungry, the prime concern becomes finding food and making yourself something to eat. Since this process involves obtaining and preparing food, the process of meal preparation can be considered a productive endeavour. (Perhaps in the age of microwave dinners, the productive element isn't as evident ; the act does not pose any challenge whatsoever, so we can safely dismiss microwaving a frozen package from our definition of a productive task.) The very act of striving to complete a non-trivial task implies some degree of work.

I posit that hard work is the unnecessarily stressful and difficult version of work. Whenever I hear someone say they are a hard worker, or that "this job requires a lot of hard work and determination", I become instantly skeptical. What do you mean? Is it particularly stressful? Do you not have the necessary competence, so every task is a nigh-insurmountable challenge? If either of these applies, it seems to me that some sort of change is in order; in other words, the work itself is not inherently hard, it's the psychological approach to the work in combination with the amount of mental or physical effort required that makes it difficult. 

I made this Stress vs. Effort diagram to help illustrate my thoughts. In the bottom left, we see a region I call Peace. Note that this area experiences relatively little stress and requires little effort. Furthermore, a person in Peace can put in more effort, as long as there is little stress, and proceed into the Work quadrant without delving into the realm of Hard Work. On the other hand, someone who has a bit more stress will quickly jump into a state of Anxiety even if relatively little effort is required.

My conception of the interplay between stress and effort, and how they combine to make Hard Work.

Notice that people with higher levels of stress who require a bit more effort jump relatively quickly into the realm of Hard Work. This is because Hard Work is necessarily (in my opinion) accompanied by intolerable stress. If the work is hard, it means it requires an unsustainable combination of effort and stress. In contrast, people who can maintain relatively low levels of stress can put in a significant amount of effort and remain in a healthy state of Work that is not perceived as being overly Hard. That said, being too high on the Effort axis would be exhausting and would inevitably lead to a state of Hard Work.

What is Optimal?

People like to tout that they are always busy. Perhaps they like to flaunt their dedication to productiveness. Perhaps they are looking for pity. Whatever it is, they are probably quite high in one or both of the dimensions of Effort and Stress. However, we can be certain that such people feel like they don't have enough time, and this can easily cause increased stress (see Ashley Whillans - Time Smart). The bottom line is that the busy bodies out there are either in the Anxiety region or the Hard Work region, and neither one of these is desirable. 

So what is desirable?

The left-hand side of course! The goal should be to minimize stress. There can be many reasons for which a person might be stressed, some of the most prominent causes being: time poverty, feelings of being underappreciated or overwhelmed, feeling unproductive and unmotivated, loneliness, or even (especially) a lack of sleep. 

Conclusion

In the end, we never want to be working too hard. Effort does not have to be negative; it's possible to feel energized and happy after a day filled with meaningful work! An optimal state of flow likely occurs in situations with low-stress and moderate-to-high effort.

It's the mindset, the psychological background, that determines how hard the work really is. Negative feelings caused by stress, and especially by depression, can make even minuscule amounts of effort feel intolerably diffcult. So the next time you feel like you're doing hard work, think back on what that might mean: are you exerting yourself in a sustainable and fulfilling way, or is stress compounding your perceived amount of work and turning it into something negative?