The thinking behind the traditional quote is setting a lot of kids up for failure.
“‘Work smarter, not harder!’
Boy is that conventional wisdom doing our youth a disservice today.
‘Work extraordinarily hard so that you understand the value of it & then use perspective, based on experience to eventually work smarter.’
Not as much of a ring, but better advice.”
-Ray Zingler on X
Work smarter, not harder?
They can’t even crank a leaf blower.
Seriously. They can’t. “Gas, primer, choke, huh!?”
And it’s not their fault, either.
We’re baking the construct of fundamental skills out of them and far worse than the lack of acquiring the menial skills, we’re not teaching them hard work.
And hard work is not an acquired trait.
It is a learned skill that requires a ton of repetition.
This is why the very trade work we demonize in the public-school college prep route that we subject our kids too is only going to increase in value.
“Plumbing these days is so expensive!”
“Gosh, my mechanic has raised his prices!”
Obviously so and those tradesmen are only (rightfully) going to get more expensive because there are less and less of them.
Those damn blue-collar assholes who chose to acquire practical skills and work hard! How dare they charge me more for gas changes and blinker fluid!
Don’t get me wrong, in due time I definitely think all people should learn to work smarter, not harder, but the keyword here is LEARN.
To be able to justify the act of working smarter, one must know what hard work looks, feels, and tastes like.
Taste?
If you’ve worked hard, you know what I am talking about. You know the taste of sweat, literal grit, and hunger. It’s a distinct taste.
Trying to work smarter from the jump is precisely what contributes to the fragility notion in our kids.
“Hire somebody else.”
“There is an app for it.”
Translated:
Learned laziness and weakness.
There are lazy, weak people who are working smarter, not harder every single day with a catastrophically low quality of life.
Take the long way.
Callous your hands.
Carry the buckets to the truck. Don’t drive the truck to the buckets.
Hard work is a blessing.
And when one combines the know-how and willingness to work hard with intelligence, an independent, capable, perspective-oriented person is created.
These are the people our society needs.
More people who know their way around a shovel and a hammer and less people trying to win the, “there’s an app for that” Olympics.
Work Harder.
Then Work Smarter.
