Why sweat and struggle lead to our best work

Why sweat and struggle lead to our best work

One of the truest things I ever read about great work is from Gail Collins.  She said,

We always need to remember that behind almost every great moment in history, there are heroic people doing really boring and frustrating things for a prolonged period of time.

Great work comes from hard work.  As Collins reminds us, it took women 70 years of struggle to get the vote in the US.  Things worth doing are more often than not a slow-motion struggle.that can feel like an endless slog.  The struggle is unavoidable, so if we want to accomplish things that matter, we have to find a way to sustain it.  

In my experience, there are three things that make this a challenge: the feeling of being alone in the struggle, the sense of failure that comes with the struggle and the fortitude required to persevere in the struggle.

If you a leader, you may feel especially isolated in the struggle to build a company, to remedy a crisis or to turn around a troubled program.  When you encounter failure, which you will, you may think you are the only one consumed with self doubt.  You may take it as a sign you don't belong in your job or feel like an impostor in your efforts.  It may not seem like a good idea to talk about the struggle, though I think that in many cases, we should.  There's an illusion that everyone else seems to have it all figured out - except they don't.  You are never alone in these feelings, and no one is out there having it easy in their own hard work.  Struggle is a universal.  That is the first paradox of struggling - it seems unique to you but it's common to us all.

As Ben Horowitz puts it, "Every great entrepreneur from Steve Jobs to Mark Zuckerberg went through The Struggle and struggle they did, so you are not alone. But that does not mean that you will make it. You may not make it. That is why it is The Struggle. The Struggle is where greatness comes from."

Which brings me to the second point - and paradox - about struggling.  While the struggle can make you feel dumb, it's what makes you smarter.    

Of course hanging in there long enough to learn requires a great deal of grit, which is the third challenge I find.  You have to build up the ability to persevere through the times you feel you just can't figure it out and want to quit.

"Our math teacher gives us these problems and just leaves us there to try to figure it out," sighed one of my daughters early in the last school year.  "He doesn't explain everything we need to do or help each time we get stuck."

Smart teacher, I thought.  As someone who works in educational media, I know there's a host of research showing that letting students struggle with their material, hit a wall and learn to persevere till they understand is far better preparation than helping to hand them success.  As NPR noted in a recent story

"This quality of being able to sustain your passions, and also work really hard at them, over really disappointingly long periods of time, that's grit," says Angela Duckworth, a psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania who coined the term "grit" — and won a MacArthur "genius grant" for it... Kids no longer hear "You're so smart!" or "Brilliant!" Rather, teachers praise students for their focus and determination. "You must have worked really hard!" or "To have performed this well, you must have put out a lot of effort."

At the end of the school year, my daughter said the best thing about sixth grade was "learning to enjoy the struggle." In the classroom, on the rock climbing wall or at work, it's how we all grow.  While it may not be pleasurable - in fact, it can be downright heartbreaking - it's a way of being that we can learn to appreciate and even embrace.

I'm still working on it.  To remind myself that I'm not the only one who struggles. That you learn by stumbling, not by soaring.  And that grit matters more to success than genius.

"This is fricking hard," a colleague said to me this past week.  We talked about how to help each other.  Then I said to her as much as to myself, "Keep going."

Kate Webster, Ph.D.

DEI Consultant, TEDx Speaker, Facilitator & Executive Coach | Building Inclusive Workplaces

8y

An important life lesson that is good to hear today: "To remind myself that I'm not the only one who struggles. That you learn by stumbling, not by soaring. And that grit matters more to success than genius."

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Riccardo Bua, MBA

Cybersecurity - Technology - Customer Experience Executive - I design secure solution for Agile - Digital transformations (Critical Infrastructure, Governance, Risk, Crisis Management and Enterprise architecture)

8y

Loved the concept of the struggle and couldn't agree more with the post content, thanks for sharing :-)

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Markitia Jackson, MHA

Committed, Dedicated, & Thriving!

8y

Yes very true

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Steven McGee

Signals & Telemetry Annex K for RBF's The World Game / USPTO 13/573,002 Heart Beacon Time - Space meter, metrics, standards. TradeFi / TRC Trade Reference Currency = end state. Adaptive Procedural template framework DeFi

8y

I just keep pushing that peanut up the mountain with my nose, year in, year out.. :) wouldn't be doing it if not for inspiration from intuitive women though

Robertas Petkevičius

IT Team Lead at Luminor Lietuva

8y

I've found there good and nice things which gjves inspiration for the next day. Thanks!

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