It’s Not About Working Harder

It’s not about working harder or even smarter. It’s about showing up to any project fully committed and completely open.

— Michael Neill

Is it even possible to get ahead by not working harder and smarter? And how does showing up fully committed and completely open work out better?

We’ve all been conditioned by our parents, schools, and society on the virtues of working harder and smarter.

On top of that, we are presented with an endless array of books, articles, and tools today that are supposed to help us work smarter and be more productive.

But do they really help? Are we making progress?

At some point, many of us discover that working harder and smarter still isn’t enough.

Most of us reach a limit. There’s a point where we can no longer keep working harder or even smarter.

As I engaged more deeply in the work that became Exploring Forward Thinking Workplaces, I kept discovering and learning something new and different.

It was subtle at first, but I soon realized that I was learning things that helped me be a better listener, less reactive, and more reflective. This all led to many changes and opened me up for deeper learning.

Everything was somehow different and changing — naturally.

I was no longer pushing myself and focused on getting things done just for the sake of getting it done. What needed to get done got done. More and more opportunities and people just seemed to show up at the right time.

Many people have influenced me in this direction, but there is one person in particular who has had a significant impact on me — Michael Neill.

Michael is a prolific author and internationally renowned transformational leader, and the title of my interview with him is, It’s Not About Working Harder, or Even Smarter.

Here are a few of my favorite takeaways from the interview:

• The more we make space for things to unfold—as opposed to trying to make them fit the banks of the river of limited possibility we dug with our habitual thinking—the more they will.
• When I say, “Do you know what you’re capable of?” I’m pointing to a deeper dimension of the mind—a deeper dimension of the human potential where creativity, resilience, and resolve come from.
• If I could drill one thing into people’s heads, it’s that everything is hard until you’re all in.
• We all walk around preoccupied most of the time. We don’t even notice that we’re tapping into such a limited part of our creative capacity.
• There’s just this connection to an intuitive, creative collective unconscious that begins to emerge. I can’t tell you exactly what that is, but it’s always available.

There’s a lot more in my interview with Michael in The Future of the Workplace. Get your copy today!