Working Hard?

“Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning. Once it does, it becomes the kind of thing that makes you grab your wife around the waist and dance a jig.” (Gladwell 150)

I found this chapter of Outliers to be really interesting, and I have to say I really liked it. Gladwell talks about the relationship between success and hard work. ‘Hard work’ has come to have a bit of a negative undertone to it, I think, but I also think that undertone is wrong. Louis Borgenicht, a Jewish immigrant, was very poor. However, he was also very good at making clothes. And so he went wandering the streets, to find a garment that people wore, but no one sold. And what he found was a child, playing hopscotch: wearing an apron. “When Louis Borgenicht came home after first seeing that child’s apron, he danced a jig. He hadn’t sold anything yet. He was still penniless and desperate, and he knew that to make something of his idea was going to require years of backbreaking labour. But he was ecstatic, because the prospect of those endless years of hard labour did not seem like a burden to him.” (Gladwell 150). And that goes back to the first quote I posted about meaning. Hard work, that is creative, complex, and that has the relationship between effort and reward: that work is meaningful. People don’t mind doing it, in fact, they want to do it. Borgenicht was nothing short of ecstatic, “And the Beatles didn’t recoil in horror when they were told they had to play eight hours a day, seven days a week. They jumped at the chance.” (Gladwell 150).

The lesson that applies here, that Gladwell is talking about, is an inspiring one. And perhaps we’ve heard it many times before, but I think it’s worth repeating. The is lesson is “if you work hard enough and assert yourself, and use your mind and imagination, you can shape the world to your desires.” Considering we all have somewhere around a thousand things to do this week, I think this is very applicable!