June 10, 2010 at 10:03 am, by Carl
Next month I will be flying to Ohio to work again with the excellent young men and women of SkillsUSA. This organization is one that values the effort involved in a job well done. Long ago, our country once was known for its work ethic. Now, its questionable what we really believe about “hard work.” For some, like the young men and women of SkillsUSA, they get it. When you watch some athletes or the people in Mike Rowe’s Dirty Jobs, you can tell that they get it.
Yet, as I work around the country and observe my students in the classroom, it feels like many think that hard work is something that should be avoided. Or, perhaps better stated, they think that success happens when you can navigate AROUND hard work; only “suckers” work hard. Well, the value of a job well done, of effort happily put into a task that you have willingly chosen has never been better demonstrated than in this video.
Once, our country was full of craftsmen like the guys in this video. I think we still have a country of these kind of men and women, but nationally, we find once again a philosophical war where many voices, including those in the government, seem to teach that a different philosophy, say the Philosophy of Avoiding Work, is the best. If you aren’t so sure about this, come with me when I speak to students. Whether I am teaching about Academic Success or Leadership or Values for Success, I usually work the concept of “diligent effort being required” into the talk. I should see heads nodding up and down all over the room; instead there is a clear sense of disgust or at least disagreement.
If we hope to find Success for Life, we must reclaim the same love for hard work, effort in the details, as the makers of this chair.
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11 Comments to The Value of Work
bobbyJune 10, 2010 at 12:37 pm
who works harder, these guys who make the chair with many different tools for each specific piece of wood? or someone who carves a whole chair with a carving tool? on the flip side, who works harder, these guys, or the guys who came up with the plans and sat at a computer and drew out the dimensions using a mouse and keyboard?
i think it’s easy to say that manual labor is hard work. can someone that does a desk job work hard? i think it’s harder to see because to the observer, it’s hard to look and say, “wow, he’s really reading that book hard”.
i didn’t work very hard when i was in school. some classes i had to work harder at than others to pass. maybe everyone goes to college because we’re kind of “forced” to by our culture. maybe the majority of people don’t really want to be there.
i didn’t enjoy doing homework and didn’t work hard at it, but i enjoy my job (most of the time) and work much harder at my job than i did in school. is that because money is a motivating factor? probably…
adminJune 10, 2010 at 12:52 pm
Well said, Bobby–I think there’s a gap for many people in understanding hard work, or what I often call “diligent effort.” When you watch the care, passion and precision that is put into this chair, it is clear there is diligent effort, or hard work, going into it. And absolutely someone who takes the time to apply “Craftsman type care” to the drawings, using a machine, writing a paper or digging ditch (all things I have done–sometimes well, sometimes poorly), they also have worked hard. Certainly there are people who make chairs by hand who do not work hard, put forth no special effort or provide no sense of care to their work.
Your effort at your work probably reflects your own sense of being a craftsman, of knowing that you do your work for a larger audience than just the boss. I’ll bet you care more than for just the paycheck too. So, I don’t mean to say that only “manual labor = working hard.” I mean to say “watch these people put in diligent care to this thing they are doing.” Most of my students, and most people I interact with, do not do that.
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