“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” – Abraham Lincoln
How many people have you seen struggling with their jobs? Most of the people are working with their chosen profession or career yet they’re unhappy. They have to work at least 8 to 12 hours a day and yet, they haven’t really got to save much or anything at all. This is not surprising any more or better yet, it has been a typical life of an employee whether in a job that requires manual skills or academically intelligence.
A study conducted by Adam K. Anderson, an associate professor at Cornell University’s College of Human Ecology said that: “There’s this implicit blame that people aren’t working hard enough and that the lack of savings is a reflection of work ethic,” He added: “But the data suggest that while people work a lot and work hard, saving is a problem,”.
Are you one of them where you feel like you’re inside a prison cell, chained and restricted? Or are you the one who’s satisfied with what you’re earning? It’s true that you have to live your life the way that you should want it to. No one can take that right away from you. However, if you’re going to work hard anyway, should you be at least working hard to be financially capable?
What does it take to be Successful ?
Success is not going to be an easy journey since there are no magic formulas for it. You have to make tons of sacrifices in life including your energy, your money and most importantly, your time.
The scientists surmised that earning money over saving it is rational thinking from the brain’s perspective. Make it an aim to work hard but also work hard on being smart too. I’m not degrading you or anyone else but this only means that you have to work hard and be smart about it. Be clever enough to work hard in the right way. Learn a new skill and maximize the use of your time.
Let’s suppose that as an Assistant, you’re working 8 hours a day in your office which is totally normal for someone with a full-time job. And then while you’re at it, make it an aim to learn other skills and set a goal for yourself. Why not try to learn the most in-demand skills nowadays, technical skills, probably from your friends or colleagues in IT department. I’m sure there could be some free time you can spend on learning these specific skill sets such as editing document or pdf files, videos, photos, solving technical problems from hardware to software and such tasks.
Constantly upgrade your skillset in order for you to deliver more in the market place. You’re not only investing your time but you’re also learning one in which you could use some time in the future, probably through high-paying freelance or home-based work or even in putting up your very own business. Years from now, you wouldn’t know how long you put up with your crappy job.
Before you know it, probably 5 or 10 years are gone by the time you know it.
Just like what Abraham Lincoln said at the quotation from the beginning, an ax is a representation of a strength multiplier. You can be the sharpest tool for cutting yet with a dull axe, you’re in big trouble! These multipliers have something to do with the skills. Thinking, learning and improving a certain skill before doing are all part of the strength. You put in a lot of work and effort and in the end, you aim to perfect your skills beforehand that could achieve better results.
Think of the Long-Term Goal
Think ahead as we prioritize the present and attaching less to the importance of the future which is said to be a factor why people prefer to earn instead of saving.
Pay the price early so we can enjoy the fruits later. Don’t worry about the other people, about your contemporaries. What they’re doing right now is none of your business. Remember the scriptural quotation, “What you reap, is what you sow”.
Focus on yourself, on what you can do to achieve your goal in being financially capable. But then somehow, we don’t want to focus much on having or earning tons of money. It was never everything but it is truly important.
Doing hard things first can lead to an easy life next. Think of the money as Oxygen. When you worked hard enough and made an intelligent decision about it, money would grow on you like oxygen. You won’t have to feel the need to constantly worrying or thinking about the money. Like oxygen, it would be something as normal as it could be.
“Rich people have easy lives because they do what is hard; Poor people have hard lives because they do what is easy”. Everyone suffers by either in the pain of self-discipline or in the pain or regret. Make your choice.
Picture credit: PEXELS
