The Key to Hard Work and Productivity Alignment

by Tom Farr

For years, I wanted to write and be a writer, and for years I read every book I could get my hands on about how to be a great writer. When I was finished with one book, I would move on to the next.

Books are great. In fact, there are several that I would recommend. But if you don’t stop reading books about writing and actually start writing, you’ll never be able to call yourself a writer. Because writers write. There’s no getting around it.

Moving from Theory to Practice

Theory can’t take you very far because a theorist may know a lot, but if it doesn’t show up in the things that they do, it’s a tragic waste of time and potential.

I knew a lot about writing because I’d studied a lot, but it made very little difference if I wasn’t putting it into practice.

Before self-publishing, there were tons of books on almost any subject. Want to learn how to be an entrepreneur? Buy a book and learn everything you want to know and more you didn’t even know you needed to know. But since self-publishing, the amount of books from which you can learn theory is growing day by day.

But as great as all the information that we have at our fingertips is, many of us become paralyzed into inaction. We see the success of others, and we want to believe that we’re capable of that as well, but what if we’re not? Maybe I should read another book on it. It might help to get a number of different perspectives, right?

The Illusory Power of Fear

If you want something to happen, you have to make it happen. I have three children, ages 6, 5, and 4, and they often face small things that would be fun for them to do, but they’re scared to try them. My daughter watches children her age going down the water slide at the pool, and she wants so badly to go down herself, but she’s scared.

If there’s anything I want my children to learn early in life that I didn’t, it’s that you shouldn’t let fear stop you from doing something your soul desperately wants to do.

The More Aggressive Power of Discontent

If you’re unhappy with your life, change it. If you want to be a writer, be a writer. Theory is great, but practice is the only way to move beyond motionless theory.

Fear and insecurity feel like they hold a lot of weight over us, but you eventually have to allow the discontent to have the louder voice.

Our souls cry out to do what we’re made for, but we often quiet that voice with countless reasons of why we shouldn’t do it.

Working Hard at the Right Things

Sometimes the reasons we shouldn’t do what we love are good. I wrote recently that Free is a Gateway to Building a Career, but as the father and husband of a family of five, I have to fit free on top of teaching and freelancing. I can’t write for free all the time in hopes that a publisher will want to publish me.

So I work hard doing the things I don’t love in order to earn the right to do the things I do love.

But what if working hard isn’t enough to be productive?

It isn’t. What we choose to do is vitally important because we can do a lot of things that are good yet don’t actually contribute to living the life we want to live.

You can work hard and feel like you’re making progress simply because you’re exerting energy, but if you’re working hard at the wrong things, you’re merely spinning your wheels.

We have to work hard at the right things in order to truly be successful at doing what we love and making a living at it.

This first requires sitting down and figuring out what the right things are.

• What specifically do you need to do to get better at what you love?
• What specifically do you need to do to get closer to making a living at what you love?

This requires a lot of deliberate thought. Where can you do what you love and get paid to do it? It might require thinking outside the box because the world is always changing.

My Journey to Doing What I Love

For me, in addition to my freelance writing, I started a blog about writing and creating called The Whisper Project. I also write short stories and actually won a contest in May with a story called “The Change.” I’m also writing a supernatural/sci-fi thriller story on Medium called Extraction.

Working Smart at Doing What You Love

If you want to do what you love, you should pursue it wisely. Don’t just work hard and spin your wheels. Sit down with a notepad and ask some serious questions about what it will take for your to work hard at doing the right things to do what you love.

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Tom Farr is a blogger, storyteller, and screenwriter who teaches English Language Arts to high school students. He loves creating and spending time with his wife and three children. He blogs regularly about writing and storytelling at The Whisper Project.