Work hard once.
Work hard once. Don’t work a little often.
I’m a big fan of a working method that says: “Work hard now, instead of working a little bit often”. There are things that need to be repeatedly, for example creating a series of articles like this one. When doing such things you can choose to work hard once, this means that you take some days to do only that. Or, what most people do, you can choose to work repeatedly and work each day, week or month a little bit.
I work hard once because I’m lazy
When it’s possible I choose to work hard once, rather than repeatedly a little bit. I do that because I’m a lazy guy. Yeah, you read well: I work hard because I’m lazy. When there is a series of work to produce I always was motivated the first three or two times. But then, with the time I usually became lazy and did stop doing the series. Or even worse, if the work had really to be done, I procrastinated until the deadline to then work hard.
Today, when doing a series, I work once directly from the beginning. Because I know that if I don’t do it, the project will die soon or will have to be done in the stress just before the deadline.
The benefits of working hard once
There are some benefits that I found out while I was using this method for making creatives project happen (discover more in the last chapter).
You do the setup once
This is pretty obvious. If you work once, you have to do the setup for being ready to work only once. In the setup, I also consider the time needed to get in a project and to be really ready to work. It takes at least 10 to 30 minutes each time to really get into a project. If you do it once, then you lose less time repeatedly.
You work with the same style
Because you work in only one time frame the different elements of the series have a common flavour. When you do things monthly, it’s quiet easy to not use the same writing style than you used a year ago. But if you write a series of articles one after the other you will naturally have a similar writing style that gives coherence to your project.
You can publish regularly
Working hard once, doesn’t mean that you have to work always. If we take the same example of the article series, it’s easy to keep a regular publishing habit when all the work is already done, and you just have to press publish.
You learn a lot
To learn to ride a bicycle you can either try it out very often, or try it out once a month. You see me coming: it’s easier to learn when you are doing things during a longer time frame. If you want to learn a new skill, working hard once or two big times is certainly faster.
You finish your projects
You know it, I’m lazy. And when I decide to create a new side project that is composed of a series or different elements I have to design it’s hard for me to keep the focus. By working hard once, I need just one “dose” of motivation, and then can work on something else. If you have troubles in finishing long term projects, transform them in short term projects.
Examples of projects done like that
This article series
The first 50 articles I wrote on Medium were written in about a week. I just focused my time on doing that. After having done, I published, and still publish, one article per week. In fact, I just make the articles live to everyone. They are already finished, but to create an audience and a routine for people, I just publish them week after week.
300 ideas with sketches and description
In 2014 I had a project where I decided to find 300 ideas, sketch them and then describe them. At the end I had 300 shit ideas card that gave me 300 options, insights and possibilities for my project. I found the ideas in two long train trips. I sketched and wrote the description of the 300 ideas in about a week, where I just did that every day, 8 hours a day.
Going further
When working hard once, you can use huge numbered goals
to keep the motivation high.
