5 Reasons Most People Are Too Lazy To Be Wealthy
Most of us are lazy in ways we don’t even realize... Hard work won’t necessarily make you wealthy, but being lazy will certainly hold you back.
Do you really need to get up early, work hard all day, and go to bed still thinking about your passion? Especially if there doesn’t seem to be any link between hard work and wealth…
Will hard work make you wealthy?
There doesn’t seem to be a correlation between hard work and wealth. There are, after all, countless examples of poorly compensated laborers working inhumane hours of exhausting physical labor.
Simply put: Hard work doesn’t lead to wealth.
Creating value leads to wealth. And in most cases creating value requires hard work.
Many wealthy people inherited large estates. They’ve never worked a day in their lives. But Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos didn’t inherit large estates. They created their own wealth.
Creating your own wealth comes with consistent, dedicated, hard work.
When you try to find an example of a self-made billionaire who started from nothing, and didn’t work hard for his money it becomes a bit more difficult. There are only a handful of self-made billionaires who simply lucked out. (And I can’t think of any off the top of my head).
There are also self-made billionaires, such as Bernie Madoff, who take shortcuts — but in the end, these shortcuts catch up to you.
Why Most People Are Too Lazy To Be Wealthy
1. People don’t add value that can generate wealth
Recently I’ve been hearing more and more people say that wealth comes from a positive mental attitude. Things like “believe and you will achieve” and “have faith and you’ll make it”.
A positive attitude is important, but it’s only a secondary influence on your success. Being positive, by itself, doesn’t create value. You won’t get paid simply for believing strongly enough that you will get paid.
You cannot dream yourself into wealth. You must create value that you can be compensated for.
The right mindset will help you create wealth, but the right mindset is far from simply being “believing in yourself”.
The right mindset is a combination of knowing:
1. The world doesn’t owe me anything.
2. I need to create value to receive compensation.
3. Life isn’t fair, but complaining won’t change that.
4. I need to work hard and be willing to make sacrifices.
5. I’ll always stay humble and learn.
2. People miss opportunities
People often complain that others get more opportunities. “I wish that would happen to me”, or “That kind of thing never comes my way.” The truth is that the harder you work, the luckier you get.
“The harder I work, the luckier I get.”
- Samuel Goldwyn
Two of my friends, who finished school at the same time as I did, led very different lives after school. They received different opportunities, and earn very different incomes.
The one friend, we’ll call him Jonathan, started a degree after school. Jonathan bunked most of his classes, missed an assignment or two, and didn’t study all that much. He’d normally begin studying a day or two before each exam.
He ended up passing only one of his subjects. Jonathan explained the reason for his failure:
“Actually, it was my career councilor’s fault. The subject-matter was nothing like he’d explained. The exams also weren’t up to standard. And don’t even get me started on the poor quality study material… The lecturers also have no clue what they’re doing.”
He dropped out and started working. Two weeks into his new job he lost interest and quit. He got a new, new job. A week into the job he got a flat tire and gave his boss a call: “Won’t be able to make it this week, sorry.”
Now, once again, he’s looking for a job. “I just don’t get these ‘amazing opportunities’ that other people get. [William] gets a massive salary for barely doing anything — I wish I could get something like that.”
The other friend, who we’ll call William, had a different experience after school. His family didn’t have money for him to study. He had a different outlook:
“I’ll need to get a job. It’s not like I have another choice. Besides, my dad worked before he could afford to study… Why should I expect anything different?
He started working in a packing warehouse by packing bags on storage shelves. It wasn’t a glamorous job, but he didn’t care. If he was going to be a warehouse bag-packer, he was going to be the best warehouse bag-packer in the company.
He’d work late nights and weekend days (all without pay or recognition). To everyone else, he was working to excel at his seemingly dead-end job. To him, he was working toward a goal. He would just say:
“If I keep working hard enough, someone will eventually notice. If they don’t, I’m not working hard enough yet.”
He kept doing it for much longer than anyone thought he’d be able to. Eventually, he was proven right. Someone did notice. An executive director pitched up at the warehouse one day and invited him to lunch. He called me shortly after to tell me about his promotion into management.
“If we each get on a treadmill right now, one of two things will happen… Either you’re going to get off first, or I’m going to die.”
- Will Smith
Today he owns and manages his own business. He’s driving a car he paid for himself, and he’s living in a home that he pays for himself.
Sure, he got lucky more than a few times throughout his journey. I mean, what are the odds that an executive director would notice a warehouse packer? The point is that if he didn’t work hard, his odds would have been 0.
3. People don’t push themselves
Watching TV or playing games rather than improving ourselves is another way in which we unknowingly lazy ourselves out of success.
Income seldom exceeds personal development.
In today’s ever-changing world, we need to be ever-improving people.
We all need time to rest, and that’s important, but we generally go too easy on ourselves.
If you continue to do what you’ve always done, you’ll continue to get the results you’ve always been getting. So if you’re already a millionaire, keep doing what you’re doing — it’s clearly working.
If not, you’ll need to step up your game and ignite personal growth in yourself.
“Constant development is the law of life.”
- Mohandas Gandhi
4. People don’t keep track of their finances
In my recent article, The 4 Principles of Accumulating Wealth, I explained the importance of knowing what you have and what you’re earning. If you don’t know what’s coming in and what’s going out you’re spiraling in an unknown direction…
“The person who doesn’t know where his next dollar is coming from usually doesn’t know where his last dollar went.”
If you don’t know what you’re earning, how do you know you’re getting paid what you’re worth? And if you don’t know what you own, how do you know it’s becoming more over time?
The average person actually has no idea how much goes in or out of their accounts. They don’t know what their net worth is. They’re driving with a broken GPS. “Turn left. Now, Turn left. Then, Turn left up ahead.”
5. People focus on the wrong things
Many of us have long to-do lists. We tick away furiously at these lists. It helps us stay productive, and it helps us get what needs to be done out of our heads.
The problem is that the items on the list don’t always move us closer to our goals. Take the following to-do list as an example:
1. Water the garden.
2. Alphabetize my books.
3. Find new prospects to contact for business.
4. Create an impressive email signature.
It’s easy to see that item 3 is the most important on the list. We might unknowingly be procrastinating by doing the less daunting tasks first. I’m personally guilty of this and will often reason something like this:
I can’t email prospects without a professional email signature, so I’ll need to do item 4 before item 3. Oh, and the garden will die if I don’t water it soon — my prospects won’t die, will they? And what about my books? We’re getting guests this weekend, I can’t have the books looking disorderly…
Item 3, the most important item for the day, ends up rolling over until tomorrow.
The conclusion (and a bit of advice)
We need to realize that wealth doesn’t come from hard work. It comes from creating value that others are willing to pay for.
Whether you’re creating value in your job that businesses are willing to pay for, or entrepreneurial products that customers are willing to buy; you always need to be looking for ways to create more value.
If you create more value, you’ll become more valuable. In turn, you’ll receive more compensation for your value.
Once you understand how value creates wealth, you’ll need to work hard at it. You’ll need to work honestly and consistency, day after day. There’s no cheating the system.
By keeping track of your finances with a hawk’s eye your financial position will improve over time. You’ll need to constantly learn, study, and improve to keep up with the fast changing world you’re competing in though.
And finally, you’ll need to keep focus. It’s so easy to get distracted, ask me — I know. There’s a lot of noise in the world…
You’ll need to ignore the noise and keep going. Just cover your ears and don’t lose focus. Unfocused hard work is a treadmill that won’t get you anywhere.
