5 Reasons Why Hardworking Men Don’t Succeed at Workplace
Relentless hard work can kill your chances of success because of these 5 things.
Two years back, I was operating in a counter-insurgency environment. I was part of several operations wherein I fulfilled my role as a team member in solving complex cases.
Having spent two years gaining a fair amount of experience, I was now one of the experienced ones in the team. It was my turn to be rewarded for my efforts.
My seniors and colleagues believed in me. All I was waiting for was an opportunity to strike, to prove myself in front of everyone.
Then reality hit me in the face. Time passed, but the opportunity never came. My tenure had finished and it was time for me to get posted out.
Two years hence, as I look back at what happened, I recall that as the most mentally fulfilling and satisfying tenure of my entire career to date, even though I didn’t get recognition for my efforts.
After two years of retrospection, I cannot blame Destiny for not giving me an opportunity.
Yeah, I’ve got to go easy on myself, I know that if an opportunity had come my way, I would have quickly pounced on it.
Moving forward, I look forward to new opportunities in life, but not without lessons from the past.
I believe that hard work is not a surefire way to success. There are reasons I say so…
Inside the Box
During my tenure as a counter-insurgent, the dynamics of the environment were changing rapidly. Innovative methods were being used by insurgents to evade the forces.
I was still relying on conventional methods for success. We did not put ourselves in the shoes of the insurgents. Not thinking out of the box was a lesson as working hard but with a conventional thought process paid me no dividends.
Scarcity Mindset
I was made to believe that my resources and the information I was collecting are all too precious and I need to be secretive about it and preserve them at all costs. This mindset was popular because some people tended to glory hijacking.
I realised pretty late that the same belief was breeding a scarcity mindset. The scarcity mindset is a thought process that promotes that opportunities and resources are limited. This mindset prevented me from sharing and collaborating with others out of the fear that I would have to share the reward.
I was too late in realising insurgents are not bound by rules and borders like us.
Burnout
The work culture in a counter-insurgency environment is extremely exhausting.
The rate of operation launches is so high that many times, you return to your rooms only after a couple of days. We have to act to every intelligence that arrives, no matter how credible it is. Add to that the ratio of success is a mere 100:1. Such is the life of a counter-insurgent.
The idea behind telling you all this is that there is a high chance that you might burn yourself out so badly in those 99 operations that you fall short when the actual opportunity arrives.
This sounds sad, but when you are physically and mentally burnt out for days, without any headway, the possibility of it happening is not remote.
Feedback Deficiency
One thing that we rarely got while operating in the counter-insurgency environment was feedback.
Once an operation concluded without success, we had limited means to ascertain whether we were searching in the right place. It was like searching for a needle in a haystack, even after so much technical progress. Moreover, the launches came back to back, most of them in an altogether different location, creating even more confusion.
There was a lack of time, energy, and opportunity to reverse engineer any intelligence and obtain feedback, that could provide us any lead.
If not for the lack of feedback, our hard work would have met with commensurate results.
Seeking Gratification from Hustle Culture
While we were launching operations too often, we were very content with the thought that sooner or later, success was gonna come our way. There is no harm in thinking that way.
The only problem was that I was seeking gratification from the busy routine, content that we were working hard enough, and not bothering much about the impact that my work made.
I was not looking at things from a detached viewpoint or not taking a bird’s eye view if you will. We were truly embracing the hustle culture.
The truth was that only 2 out of 10 times were we able to create a threatening situation for the insurgents. Our focus should have been on hitting the pain points of the insurgents, and not just seeking instant gratification out of working day and night.
Conclusion
Hard work is one of the essential qualities for success, but the thing is, everybody works hard. Everyone gives their best. It’s like moths to a flame.
Apart from working hard one also has to :
- Reject instant gratification and seek delayed gratification.
- Obtaining constant feedback and striving for improvement.
- Practice perseverance and not burn out in the face of opportunity.
- Embracing the abundance mindset.
- Think outside the box.
Spare these a thought.
