My parents – of the greatest generation – espoused a hard work theory on life. Apparently not everyone was raised by my parents.
A year ago a business moved into office space two doors down from me. The way my desk is positioned, when I am at my desk I see everyone in the building coming and going. Everyone.
The argument can be made and rightfully so that not only is one not required to be in their office everyday to be productive, to be in your office every hour of every day would be counter-productive. Especially when you have to both hunt for your customers and do the hard work to delight them once they are clients.
As I sit at my computer most mornings between 7-7:30, while I work at my office on Saturday mornings or stop in on Sundays to pretend I am the cleaning service, I rarely see anyone in this new office space. Almost never. I don’t see anyone coming in early, late or anytime. Only once have I seen a vendor visit this space.
I began to think one of us was crazy. So I turned to Brainy Quotes for some outside wisdom on working hard.
“There are no secrets to success. Success is the result of perfection, hard work, learning from failure, loyalty, and persistence.” The funny thing about failure is that you have to do work, even disappointing work, in order to fail. Salespeople are even taught that NO is good. If you get enough NO’s, you will eventually get a YES.
Woody Allen of all people, famously said “Eighty percent of life is showing up.” He has shown up since the 1960’s when the American public first met Woody Allen. I counted 54 movies he has starred in or directed while showing up. Let’s face it, he showed up even when we didn’t really want him to show up.
I recently learned that my office neighbor is looking to sub lease the space. They worked at their concept for two months and have been looking for a tenant ever since. Two months.
I would not advise anyone to work the way that I work. I am absolutely sure that I could work smarter. But I am also absolutely sure that one must work. That means persistence, failure along the way, and showing up.
Two months is longer than 8 days. But does anyone believe that the world really was completed in 8 days? So either divine help was missing from my office neighbor or hard work.
I will take the hard work.
