Every so often the same few topics bubble back up into the online discourse. Often, ridiculous claims get made. "After 4 hours a day your productivity goes negative!" or some similar nonsense.
These topics remind me of my Dad every time they come up. He was a living breathing narrative violation for every claim about what a person's limits should be. As his son, I am cursed with the knowledge that not only are most people that get called "hard working" actually lazy, I'm quite lazy myself.
Sometimes just seeing that something is possible is enough to unlock ambition. The four minute mile is a great example of this effect. So I'll tell you a bit about what I know to be possible from first-hand experience, and a little of the philosophy that made it possible.
Hard Labor
My dad was an electrician. He'd pack up his truck at about 4-5am, depending on where that day's job site was. Then he'd proceed to work the entire day. Sometime in the evening he might come home. But fairly often, he'd sleep in a trailer at the job site and put in another 16 hours of work before coming home the following day.
Then he'd come home, cut the grass, clean the gutters, give me a swift kick in the ass for playing too many video games, and work on his home-improvement projects. Often, I was dragged along to contribute. Sometimes willingly but in all honesty, I was much more interested in girls and games than cutting down trees and building a retaining wall. In our house, concepts like Democracy didn't hold up against "My roof, my rules."
Some of the "home improvement" projects
- Hand-built a "shed" that was larger than some people's homes
- Dug a ditch across an acre of property by hand, to connect the house's power to the shed
- Constructed a 100-ft long, 8ft high retaining wall along the driveway
- With the wall built, he decided to put a 30ft swimming pool in the yard and then construct a deck the entire way around it and connecting to the front porch of the house
- Our home had 3 different heating sources, conventional gas heat, a pellet stove, and a wood furnace. Optimizing the heating bill was something of a hobby, but I don't think the value of my labor ever went into the calculations
- Welded together a wood-burning pool heater lined with bricks of coke he picked up at work. He preferred the swimming pool to be close to bath water.
- Not a year of my life went by where we didn't fell multiple trees, cut them into sections, and split all the wood. It is stunning how quickly you can go through 6 cords of wood.
- Built a personal winch system to allow him to lift himself into his truck after he was paralyzed below the waist
- Trying to turn an unworthy son into a decent member of society. He never gave up on me, not even once.
For most of my youth, it was normal for my dad to put in 80 hours of physical labor at work. Then he'd come home and stack another 20+ hours on top. I thought this was normal.
How To Work Hard
There are two ways to short circuit the part of the brain that wants to take it easy. The easiest way is to surround yourself with people who are constantly pressuring each other to do better. This is the healthy option.
If there's a healthy option of course there's also an unhealthy option.
Anger has benefits for attaining goals.
That's not just me saying that, by the way. You can thank the American Psychological Association for that bit. For me, the secret is in visualization. I think of my body as a machine, and I'm a pilot. The machine needs maintenance, but it would rather play video games. But I'm the pilot, so I simply order the machine to stand up and go do what it is supposed to do.
Sometimes, the machine doesn't want to listen. Sometimes the machine wasted 45 minutes doomscrolling. Then I get angry at the machine. I don't care what the "machine" wants at that point.
There are few forces in life as motivating as being pissed off, even at yourself.
The secret is to stop thinking about concepts like "want" or "need." Instead, think about what kind of person you are supposed to be. Are you the type of person to quit? Is that who you want to be?