No offence, but this is something that I see every day from my Indian colleagues at work -- instead of stopping for a moment and finding a right way to go, they just keep pushing harder in some unoptimal direction. Yes, this might fill you with a sense of righteousness, but no way the carpenter (see comments to the blog post) who works 10 hours a day is better off than the one who does only 5 hours of _right_ work.
There are at least three alternatives to working harder: automate the work, outsource it, and elect not to do it at all. These are often better choices, since not all work adds equal amount of value (and much work subtracts value).<p>I'm working on a blog post about this subject, as "longer hours is a proxy for productivity" is the most pathological thing I have seen in my career as a Japanese salaryman.
I'm reminded of the advice of Thomas Jefferson to his daughter: "It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing," from this HN post:<p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=675308" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=675308</a>
Somehow I don't really buy it. Seems to me it is more a management problem. Looking at sports, I suspect simply running 10 hours more every week than the competition won't automatically make you the winner. Rather, there is a system to getting the best effect from training (when to take breaks, what muscles to train when, what to eat, ...).<p>If you are stressing out with working harder and harder, perhaps you lose the time for having inspirations and seeing the important things to work on.
"What do you do if you feel you are born unlucky? What do you do if you feel that the whole world is conspiring against you to make you not succeed? And, what do you do if you feel you have less intellect, less resources and less everything to succeed?"<p>Just a word of warning: There are many people who will default to <i>feeling</i> this way, whether it's true or not. Don't rule out mental illness or anxiety.<p>Turning yourself into a workaholic is not the solution if what you really need is to talk to a therapist. I've known several people who learned this the hard way.<p>Before diving head-first into work, do a quick reality check and ask yourself whether your feelings are reasonable, and be honest with yourself about what you're giving up in order to get those extra few hours of productivity.
In the spirit of providing equal and opposite cheap advice:<p>Except for the alternative of taking a break and thinking about your life, and perhaps choosing to focus on something where your hard work is more likely to pay off or where working harder comes more natural because you love what you're doing.
I would amend this to "Work Harder on the Right Thing".<p>What's the right thing? That's something you'll just have to figure out for yourself. Sometimes finding the right thing is harder work than actually working on it.
This is not right. Work in a manner that the work you are doing can be spun off and will continue to work on its own, leaving you free to do something new that will build on top of that.