Fact Check: Stop Working So Hard. It’s Keeping You Poor…

One thing you need to realize is that you’re working way too hard, and it’s what’s keeping you poor.

A chart from Feenstra et al. (2015 Penn World Tables 9.1, World Bank) shows that the wealthiest countries in the entire world also work the least.

But wait, what about all those inspirational quotes on social media? Hard work, hard work, hard work, hard work, hard work, in an ideal social media world, these quotes fit perfectly in a post.

They get you motivated and excited to log into your computer and start working furiously to move up the wealth ladder.

But what if I told you that this is all wrong, in 2017, a Master’s study conducted by the Urban Institute revealed that only 16% of people who lived half their lives in poverty were able to move up the ladder by their late 20s.

These numbers were based on individuals who were consistently working or attending school, so you know, hardworking people.

But only a few of them were able to get out of the hardest level of the escape room, think about it like this.

If you’re in prison and you’re breaking up rocks with a pickaxe in the terrible hot heat for hours, have you worked hard? Absolutely, but are you any wealthier? People don’t pay you for your hard work, they pay you to solve a problem.

The more complex the problem is to solve, the fewer people who can solve it, and thus, those who can solve it, can charge more money.

It sounds obvious, right? But not many people including me made that connection without actually experiencing this.

73% of Americans believe that, on a scale of 1 to 10, when it comes to success, hard work is a 10, and this is one of the problems with measuring success in such black-and-white terms.

via GIPHY

It creates this allusion where successful people are considered hard workers, but those who aren’t are considered bums.

But this is the furthest thing from the truth, is someone who has student loans, a child, a mortgage to pay, and working 2 jobs, lazier than the CEO of a company making phone calls all day at his desk, and trying to figure out how to use video calls?

No of course not, but, money comes from the specific value you bring to people, sure, someone could be doing back-breaking labor for 12 hours straight, but is that a problem only very few people can solve?

Probably not, however, an effective CEO can close a deal worth millions of dollars with a five-minute conversation on the phone.

So where did this mentality come from, that tricked me and you too? Well let’s go back in time a little, in the 1900s, after Henry Ford’s revolutionary assembly line gained traction across the US, we saw, a huge boom in productivity.

With more productivity came a lot more money, if you grew up during those times, your input was directly tied to your output.

You equated your wealth with the hours you put into the factory, there weren’t a whole lot of jobs during that time, and, in a factory, the more hours you put in, the more you were able to produce, and the more money you made.

But those days are pretty much long gone, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, manufacturing work has gone down tremendously, from 32% in 1910 to 8% in 2013.

While other types of services and industries have increased, the US economy has grown exponentially since then, and now there are thousands of different paths to make money even ones that are completely online.

After going down this exact path that I am talking about, here are 3 reasons hard work won’t make you rich.

Let’s pretend that I am you for a moment, you’re hard at work right now, typing away in the office, you go in early and work late to make sure your boss is happy.

You go home and you sleep for 6 hours and then you go back to work to make your boss happy, you give up your free time to get more work done on the weekends to make your boss happy, and what do you get in return?

Probably the same fixed salary as your other workers, although your boss may be grateful for all your effort, your boss is not giving you a raise every month.

You’ll typically need to wait till the end of the year for a pay bump, but that doesn’t even keep up with inflation.

But what if I told you that that half a percent raise at the end of the year might not even be worth it?

There are a ton of downsides when you work that hard for that long, the more you work, the more exhausted you become, when you get back home, you have trouble sleeping, or you might not have enough time to live life outside of work.

Keeping yourself busy all the time prevents you from thinking outside the box, if you’re constantly stressed out, your mental clarity and creativity will suffer.

And those two things, mental clarity, and creativity are the tools that you need to notice the problems that need solving in the world and think of ways to come up with solutions to those problems.

Research found that increasing the workload from 40-60 hours a week did not produce an output of 50% more, which is what you’d imagine would happen since you’re working 50% more hours.

Instead, the actual output from those extra hours was only between 25% to 30%, giving it all your effort at work all the time will eventually burn you out, make you want to not do anything else, reconsider your life, and daydream.

You think, “I’ll just take a one-week vacation and come back and restart the entire hard work cycle all over again.”

But imagine, what could you achieve if, instead of working those extra hours at your job, you instead went home and just lived, or spend some time thinking about effective ways to solve problems, start a new business venture, or learn to improve yourself?

Chances are any of these things would financially reward you much more than staying late at work to make your boss happy.

Here’s a question for you, what is the most valuable resource in the entire world?

It’s time, and just about everyone you know is trading this very limited resource of theirs for money.

And here’s why you won’t get rich doing this exchange, let’s say you’re being paid X amount for Y number of hours that you work

You’re limited by the number of hours that you can work, 24 hours a day, assuming you don’t need to eat or sleep, which you can’t do.

There is a limit to how much someone will pay you for your skills.

If you’re a super successful doctor, you might be able to make a lot more per hour, but eventually, you hit a ceiling, because the market won’t pay a higher price.

Directly trading time for money makes few people wealthy, which is why 78% of American adults live paycheck to paycheck, despite being the most overworked developed nation in the world According to G.E Miller.

But here is the secret, the rich don’t trade their time for money, instead, they trade value for money.

Value is easily scalable, and it’s unlimited by the number of hours that you have in a day, think about Steve Jobs, who created the iPhone, which made the company billions of dollars, or Bill Gates, who revolutionized the computer, or my blog posts/videos, hopefully, you find value in them.

I’m able to create this once, and if the algorithm loves it, then hundreds of thousands of people, just like you, can see it.

Instead of thinking, what is a job that you can work hard at, that people will pay for? Start thinking, what value can you provide that will solve a problem?

It’s a nuanced difference, where instead of you directly trading your person, your time in exchange for money, you think of scalability. How can you easily create one thing that’ll provide more value to more people?

You are replaceable at your job, and you’re paid based on how easily you can be replaced, and sadly, some people are much easier to replace than others.

The more specialized, skilled, and the more value you can bring your company, the more they’ll pay you because they’ll find it harder to replace you, that’s why CEOs, surgeons, and lawyers can get paid a lot of money.

It takes them years, decades even, to successfully study, learn and apply their skills, but even then, those professions and those people are still replaceable.

But you want to know the one single thing that isn’t replaceable?

The mantra of hard work and you’ll get rich, which is damaging you psychologically, here’s why, you work hard, you don’t get rewarded or recognized, so you think you need to work even harder.

This cycle continues until you burn out, you give up, and then you blame yourself, after doing this myself for a long period, I learned 4 things to do instead of working hard to help you climb the wealth ladder.

1. You need to have a clear view of what value you bring to the table and be real with it.

If your skills aren’t up to par, take some classes or find a course online that’ll help you learn more valuable skills.

The more you invest in your knowledge and your skills, the more you’re able to leverage to ask for more compensation.

Abraham Lincoln once said…

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four hours sharpening the axe.”

– Abraham Lincoln

The key to greater results is to work smarter, not harder.

2. Focus on high-impact tasks.

Chances are, you have a super long running to-do list that you will never get to the end of, instead of trying to accomplish everything and stressing out if you can’t.

Focus on a task that will have the greatest long-term impact, the things that are the most critical to your job performance and the company’s success.

3. Always look for ways to solve someone’s problem.

If you’re in prison and you’re splitting rocks, no one’s going to give you money for that, but what if instead, you convince a start-up company to pay you a boatload of cash to dig holes in a very specific area so they can plant some trees? Same situation, completely different outcome.

And finally, as unfair as it sounds…

4. You need to be a little lucky.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a genius or extremely talented at something, in the end, success or getting rich requires a little bit of luck and chance.

Being in the right place at the right time, coming up with great ideas, and having the right support system as you try to execute.

It’s also about financial literacy and knowledge and life circumstances because two people with very similar incomes can end up with entirely different levels of financial security.

The average human in the US lives to around 78.8 years old, if you started working from 18 until 65, a typical nine to five, five days a week, you would have worked around 80,000 hours.

If you slept eight hours a day each weekday, you would have slept 80,000 hours, which leaves 80,000 hours of free time during the workdays.

But what about the time it takes you to commute back and from work, what about the time it takes to get ready, prepare a meal, pack your kids’ lunches, pick them up from school, cooking, dinner, cleaning, and running errands?

A study conducted by H&R Block, concluded that the average American, had about 4 hours and 26 minutes of free time per working week.

Each working week, meaning that the average American worker had less than one hour of free time from Monday to Friday, I’m not trying to say that hard work isn’t important at all, of course, it is.

Unless you’re super lucky, wealth won’t simply fall onto your lap, but it’s time to realize that the mantra of hard work is all it takes to be successful, and wealthy is wrong and harmful.

Just because you’re staying late in the office every day, doesn’t mean you’ll be rich and successful.

You need to work smarter to maximize your effort, your skills, and your value as much as possible to be wealthy and successful.

We are looking for people just like you who put in serious work and don’t feel like you’re being appreciated at your job (Or jobs because I know some of you hustlers have more than one).

This online course will help you get paid at least $500 in your first 1 month of learning their tips, tricks, and techniques, all from the comfort of your own home.

I must warn you this isn’t an instant money-making machine, but if you’re willing to stay determined you can scale this to far more than just a tiny $500.

In fact, 30 people have become millionaire entrepreneurs, and most of them were in even worse conditions than you might be in, with these exact formulas that you can get started with right now.

In case you think I’m lying here are their names and faces (No these are not fake stock photos) Let me introduce you to your dream team.

All you need to do is make a commitment to yourself, you could say as you usually do “Yeah I’ll get back to that, or I’ll think about it” But we all know that’s a lie, you’re simply procrastinating.

If you truly are sick and tired of being sick and tired, and you don’t like the trajectory of your life, then you’re going to have to do things differently my friend, or you’re going to have the same outcomes in your life.

Let these other 30 millionaires show you exactly what you can do to start making a small amount of $500 in the next 30 days, then we can scale it from there, but only if you’re 100% determined to do so.

Thanks again, and I’ll see you on the inside of the member’s area! From Adventago

“poor habits”,”habits that keep you poor”,”how to get rich”,”things poor people do”,”bad habits”,”personal finance”,”how to be rich for beginners”,”how to make money like the rich”,”how to invest money like the rich”,”ways the rich make money”,”how rich people spend their money”,”how to make more money by working less”,”how to make more money with little time”,”how to manage your money like the rich”,”how the rich become richer”,”how to become rich in 5 years or less”