Choosing the Right Path: The Importance of Direction in Hard Work

It's more important to work on the right thing than to just work hard.

Success is a blend of hard work aligned with the right kind of work. There is always a more efficient path to every goal. As Steve Jobs put it...

"You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future."

This suggests that there is always an ideal task we should be working on and a perfect path to follow if we aim for efficiency. Of course, we can never determine the exact best path in the present moment. It's something we can only identify in the future by looking back at the past.

Still, the fact remains that by doing our best to determine the most suitable path forward, we are able to utilize our resources of time and energy as ideally as possible, within our limited knowledge.

Consider a lumberjack working hard to cut down a tree. But what if, with the exact same amount of effort, he could have cut down a better tree that was right next to the one he chose? By spending a bit of extra time in reflection, we can all make better decisions and focus on better tasks, thus making much better use of our resources.

Before I dive straight into a task, I need to remind myself to spend an extra minute reflecting on whether that task is the best use of my time. If the answer is YES, then I have simply wasted one minute. But if the answer is NO, then I might have saved myself hours.