The term hard work is often misunderstood. When someone asks you to put your head down and keep doing what you’re doing, you might be setting yourself up to lose. Make the work easy for yourself—every bit of it. Want to start a company in an industry with thousands of competitors just like yours? What do you think—will it be hard or easy? Learning a new technology where millions of talented developers already exist? What do you think—will it be hard or easy to land a job?
Luck isn’t real, but we can build paths where it becomes easier for us to succeed. Success is never guaranteed, but we can improve our chances.
That’s why startups invest so much time in market research before diving in. By doing this groundwork, they avoid entering saturated spaces where failure rates are high. Market research helps uncover areas of opportunity where the odds of success are more favorable—making the work easier and smarter, not just harder.
Ask Yourself the Tough Questions
Ask yourself hard questions at the start. We are highly optimistic beings. We believe we are special and that, even though the competition is fierce or the failure rate is as high as 90%, we will still come out on top.
For anything you’re working on, take a step back and analyze the situation:
- Is this the best way to solve the problem?
- Is my current approach too complex?
- Are there easier methods that will take less time?
- Is this problem even worth solving?
- Will I learn something or make money by solving it?
- I’m about to invest x amount of time (years, months, or even hours)—am I going to get something valuable out of it?
- Have millions of others tried this and failed? What can I learn from their experiences before diving in?
Finding the Right Path is the Hard Work
Throughout life, we try to find a single path that will lead us to the things we want. We think it’s easy to find that path and that, if someone could just point it out, we could put our heads down, work hard, and achieve success.
In reality, finding that path is the hard work. It requires time and thought to carefully choose your industry and approach to a problem. By doing so, you can often avoid much of the competition and failure that others face.
There’s no substitute for hard work, but if you dedicate your hard work to finding a low-competition area and identifying efficient ways to solve problems, you might end up working less while achieving greater success