Industry – The Forth Pillar of Self Discipline
Industry, or being industrious, is the action of doing hard work. It’s the time
- Image via Wikipedia
you spend for the process of making things happen — Being diligent.
Chores at home like making your meals, cleaning the dishes, then putting the dishes away is not hard work, but it’s the work required to get required goals accomplished. You just have to do them over and over again each day as part of your personal healthy maintenance. Other “home work” would be cleaning, laundry, staying organized, paying taxes and other bills, along with many other duties. Then there are the several tasks you need to preform at work, with the children and spouse or lover. These tasks need to be preformed just sustain yourself.
You need to put in the time where it is needed. If you don’t make the time to ensure these tasks are done you can really make a mess of things – a messy house, a hungry stomach, troubled relationships, just to name a few. Larger examples would be the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage disaster that stared in the United States and spread across the world. Big or small, it’s about putting in the time where it need to be put, doing the correct tasks that need to be done.
Not thinking about them, not hoping someone else will do them, or ignoring them hoping they will go away – that will almost always make it worse.
Sometimes you know what needs to be done, sometimes you don’t. The first step will be to figure out what the first tasks are. If you know, then do it. If you don’t, educate yourself to figure that out. This may be as easy as making a phone call or searching for something on the web. Sometimes you need to get a professional involved. But not doing these tasks will certainly prevent the successful accomplishments you seek.
Sometimes little tasks that may not be difficult lingers around too long.
When I bought my first house there was a very tiny half-bath in the basement, with a rough-in for a shower. I wanted a shower there and quickly realized the reason it was only a rough-in was because of a true lack of forethought with the original design — where the plumbing was there wasn’t enough space for even the smallest shower. I knocked out a section of wall and re-framed it so there would be room. Then it sat for 10 YEARS because I didn’t want to deal with it any more. Every time I was downstairs I would be reminded about this shortcoming. I figured the toilet and sink worked, and there was a shower upstairs, so did it really need to be done? Well, it certainly looked worse then the (mostly) finished smaller bathroom that came with the house.
It wasn’t going to cost anything other then time to complete this project, all the tools and materials were purchased years ago …the can of rubber cement for the shower walls was so old it was very rusty on the outside. Finally, it took all of 2 days to finish it. The hardest part of getting it done was starting again. After all, it’s not very difficult to measure, cut, and glue things – children do that in kindergarten for fun!
(As an aside, it was writing the article on hard work that finally motivated me to get this it done!)
Time is constant, but different people will use their time with different effectiveness. It’s amazing how many people will spend their money to buy a faster more effective computer (and all the time they worked to earn that money), but pay little attention to being personally more effective.
What slows people down the most is their ability to manage themselves. Fancy technology will only serve to mask bad habits of the ineffective. Truly effective people can use old methods and still achieve their desired result, but the technology will serve to leverage their abilities to far surpass what they would otherwise accomplish..
This has been a long and difficult journey for me, and it’s still not finished (nor do I think it ever should be). I’m really stubborn – - just over 15 years ago I knew what my destination was but didn’t know how to get there. I was surrounded by people who provided well intentioned advice but didn’t know my goals or aspirations. Only I could truly know those. It was through searching for the answers in several different places and then finally taking massive action to achieve them, that has allowed me to taste what my dreams are made of.
Part of why it took me so long to get here was because I would let too many defeats bring me down. It was learning to accept these as “the learning curve”, and when I could finally embrace imperfection as the road to perfection, I gained the strength to push on through adversity.
You too will face challenges that test everything you are made of. And it’s how you accept and conquer these challenges that will build your character to what you desire.
Time is invaluable because there is no way to purchase more. But by developing your personal industrious nature you will need less time to do the things that have to be done, allowing you more time for the things you want to get done. Reversing this order will have backward results, and something will have to give.
Personal productivity can eliminate the time conflicts between work, family, friends, and fun — time you can spend time to deepen relationships, improve your health, or make additional contributions to society.
Planning and being focused on the big picture are the keys here. Hard work and working smart and not the same thing, and both need to be managed well be to effective. Though industry will provide the method to achieve your goals, you must first ensure that the steps you take are the correct ones.
When I doubt, ask.
When there is no one to ask, just do what you think is best an accept learning from mistakes.
Lack of action leads to lack of results.
Strong work ethics and determination to take action, over time, will always get strong results.
