How often have you experienced somebody asking you a question about how you did something or succeeded with a project, so you take the time to explain it to them, and then — after learning that what you did entailed a LOT of work — they look at you and declare something like “Wow! That's a LOT of work. I just couldn't be bothered to do all that!”
Life is full of interesting dichotomies.
Sure, We Want to Succeed...
On one hand, most people do want to succeed at whatever it is they are trying to do. On the other, an awful lot of us have a tendency to want to get there by way of shortcuts and "Cosmic Freebies" (luck) and for things in general to be unrealistically easy.
Some would simply explain this away by asserting that we live in an age of "entitlement" where luck and nepotism matters more than actually doing the work.
Whereas I have never really been able to ascertain precisely where this entitlement comes from, I can't entirely disagree: it does seem like a lot of people are expecting to get the results without doing the work. We even see it in the investing world... where so many are looking for the next thing that will "go to the Moon," rather than just investing to earn a solid long-term gain.
Dreams of "working hard and getting ahead" seem to have been increasingly replaced by hopes of winning the lottery, finding the next Yahoo or Amazon stock... or being "found" and made a celebrity or sports superstar.
Sometimes I find myself thinking about whether a lot of people are just plain lazy, or whether the entire paradigm for living has somehow been reset to where we increasingly expect things to be easier than they actually are.
My Talks With "Farm Girl"
A long time ago — it has been maybe 12 or 15 years — I was seriously toying with the idea of making a living off writing and blogging. I was all into researching Amazon product links, Google AdSense and other ways to monetize the blogs I was already having fun with.
As has always been the case, there were already quite a few people out there who were making pretty decent livings simply from keeping interesting blogs and being very socially active.
One particular woman I knew — let’s just refer to her as “Farm Girl” — was much admired in the growing blogosphere, because she was already making $15,000-$20,000 a month purely from her blogs and web sites.
Naturally, lots of people wanted to know what her “secret” was.
"Farm Girl's" Secret Was no Secret...
I happen to get to know Farm Girl quite well, because we were connected and "friendly" through several online psychology forums that had nothing to do with blogging.
Although Farm Girl rarely talked about what she "did," she also didn't have any secrets. Her enviable success was very simple: She was working 12-14 hours a day (sometimes more), seven days a week, maintaining 8-10 separate blogs and web properties. What's more, it had taken her six years to get to where she was.
If she did have a "secret," maybe that secret was that everything she did was personalized and hands-on, and she wrote at least 5-6 unique and original blog posts from scratch, every day. Then she spent the rest of the time with social media, engaging with readers and answering questions from people buying her products.
The secret was that she “COULD be bothered” to do everything right, rather than take shortcuts.
Not the Story We WANT...
Around that same time, I interacted with lots of fellow writers and bloggers; mostly sharing tips and techniques.
Most of them were disappointed to learn that Farm Girl didn't have some kind of formulaic and reproducible way of doing everything on autopilot while she sat on a beach in Costa Rica sipping tropical drinks with those cute little umbrellas in them. They said precisely what I wrote in my opening sentence here: “Oh, I just couldn't be bothered to do that much work!”
The sad truth is, there's an awful lot of "superficially ambitious" people out there who are looking for an "Easy Button" to help them make their way through life. And that version of life includes making it through their financial lives.
Time Keeps on Slippin'...
Whereas I haven't had any contact with Farm Girl in many years, last time our paths crossed she was still living very humbly on her mini-farm, had since used her blogging and Amazon referral earnings to buy the farm outright. Meanwhile, she had used most of any money that was left over to accumulate stock in a growing company called Netflix. Which, at the time, meant that she had been buying up batches of Netflix stock at somewhere between $5-10 a share (2008-2013-ish).
She "liked" Netflix because it "made sense to her" since all the video stores were closing down, and living out in the sticks, getting movies in the mail mad a lot more sense than a 20-mile round trip to the nearest video store.
For anybody who cares, Netflix stock currently trades at somewhere north of $450 a share... and knowing Farm Girl, her net worth is probably $25+ million, but nobody but her close friends and family knows who she is. She doesn't blog anymore. I checked...
Stop Shopping for Magic Pills and DO THE WORK!
Although I have never made a living from blogging and web sites (I made a little over $12,000 in my very best year), I have always followed Farm Girl's strategy: Stop looking for Unicorns, and just do the work. And do it PROPERLY.
That is, when I do have the time to do something, I take the time to do it properly. Sure it takes longer, and it requires more effort and attention, but in the end it would seem that my "secret" is that yes, "I can be bothered.”
Maybe that's old fashioned in our hyper-paced technological world, but I can't help but think that if more people could be bothered rather than look for shortcuts or magic moon shots perhaps the world would be a little bit less messed up than it is.
And at the end of it? You'll know that — whatever the outcome — it was ALL YOU, and not just a stroke of luck!
Thanks for reading, and I hope you've had a great weekend!
How about YOU? Do you tend to "learn and move on," or are you more of an "eternal student?" Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!
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Created at 20200920 16:23 PDT
0113/1340
The quality of posts I'm coming across today is going to crush my vote power. Haha. It's worth it!
Farm Girl sounds like a person who didn't want to work for pennies to put hundreds in a rich owners' wallet.
We can all become too bothered to put our very best out at times. I like how you recognized that fact of life. Do it right...when you have the time is a great attitude! 👍
Thanks for stopping by... I can relate, some days there is just so much more worthy content than I can vote on and still have it count for anything.
Over the years I've come to use a fairly simple metric to decide whether something is "good enough:" as you probably know, many employers check their employees' social media feeds these days, so I always ask myself — before hitting that "submit" button — whether I would be OK with all manners of people seeing and reading what I am putting out there. Doesn't mean I try to publish "War and Peace" every time... just that I recognize that everything we do in this age of "social technology" is actually our calling card in some fashion.
Yes I can really appreciate the idea of "doing the work". I do a bit of day trading. Everyone thinks that means easy money. Well, anyone is more than welcome to come on in and try your hand at it! I think they will soon see they need to "do the work" as well.
Oh yeah... with day trading, you have to do your work, and you have to know what you're doing. I did that for a while, back in the late 90's and early 00's. Only traded about six tech stocks and I knew those suckers better than the CEO's of the companies...
I think the saying :
'Hard times create strong men,strong men create good times,Good times create weak men,
Weak men create hard times' - has a lot going for it.
(not on an individual basis, but as a broad view).
On the lines of your comment, maybe it's worth to add also the words of some sort of Jamaican prophet.
You never know how strong you are, until being strong is your only choice.” - Bob Marley
....doesn't that say pretty much just confirm the saying?
Yes! that's why I said add.
Yes, I'd agree with that... it's endlessly cyclical, too. People don't necessarily recognize that history is repeating itself while it is happening; still, we tend to end up with "same tune, different band."
Thanks for the support @ewkaw and @qurator; I really appreciate it!
My pleasure :)
It is a great deal of work to have the blessing of staying at home. With you.
We're doing what we've always wanted, but there is a price.
It fluctuates with the weather.
WINK
Oh, Here's that #POSH thing you keep telling me about:
I wanted people to read this. Because there is no magic pill. And I love you. (How's that for being personal?)