Five-a-Day: Day 8: 24th of January 2023

The concept of hard work seems like a really simple and intuitive one. When we hear it invoked, we think we know what it means. For me, the idea of hard work was — and still is to a degree — like being able to imagine someone’s face in its entirety, but not actually being able to describe any of their features in detail. You can see the big picture, but not what makes it up. For most of my life, I had an intuitive sense that hard work had something to do with effort, and being able to exert that effort over extended periods of time. But effort itself is a hazy concept. Whenever I think of hard work, I always look back at my time during A-levels, when I was revising for my exams. I think, on the surface, it certainly seemed as though I was working hard. I spent a lot of hours looking at my resources and completing past papers, writing things on flash cards and drawing diagrams. But I ended up basically what the Americans might call “flunking” my A-levels. I didn’t fail, but I got merely passable grades, which wasn’t my ambition or the standard among my peers. I was really disappointed. And I remember feeling so powerless and stupid. And for a long time, my excuse was always “I’m just not good at exams”. And that was what I used to mentally bail myself out of actually having to address what went wrong. Because, although of course there are some people who have a better memory than others, who are better able to solve problems, and who are just generally smarter than other people, no one just “isn’t good at exams”. That’s a myth, I think. The real issue was that, although I gave myself and others the illusion of working hard, I don’t know, in hindsight, whether that was actually the case. Since that time, I’ve come to realise that working hard doesn’t just mean looking at something for a long time, it’s about actually engaging with what you’re doing, interrogating your understanding, and really challenging yourself intellectually, and being intellectually honest and accountable. In hindsight, there was probably a whole range of things that I found difficult or confusing but didn’t engage with, simply because it was precisely that; difficult. But I comforted myself by moving on to more familiar territory and “consolidating” that. What I’ve realised that I’m not good at is immersing myself in discomfort and confusion, and trying to address that in the moment, and actually actively engaging my brain to try to solve that problem or undo the confusion. It turns out that the ability to work hard isn’t just a quality. It’s a skill. A fact that, once you’re able to recognise it, I think, can expand your horizons about what you can possibly achieve.