One of my favorite Martin Luther King, Jr quotes is about the value of hard work. He said that if you’re called to be a street sweeper, you should do it like Michaelangelo painted. You should sweep like Beethoven played and wrote music, or Shakespeare wrote. You should sweep the streets so well, he said, “that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause.” They would say, “here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”
I haven’t always worked hard. As a child I was comfortable getting Cs on my school reports. But something changed when I hit adolescence. I may have gotten more insecure. From that point on, I worked my British little butt off. Particularly at the things I wasn’t good at. I decided to study Art at A-level not because it was easy, but because it was hard. I aced my physics exams even though I hated physics. I started exercising often, even though I’d never enjoyed it. We had a rifle range at my high school where I learned how to shoot. And over time, I realized working hard gave me a sense of appreciation for the habit in other people. One of my favorite English teachers had won an Olympic Gold medal in the pentathlon. So, I learned to do kick-turns in the pool.
I found that more and more and more, I wanted to apply myself.
These days I do take pleasure in rest. I enjoy yoga. Reading. And I like watching James Bond films. But I also take deep pleasure in rest’s opposite. There’s nothing more satisfying to me than finding a group of other people willing to dig in on a project. Figure out what’s needed. What’s the priority. And deliver the bejeesus out of it.
Why tell you this? Because a client of mine suggested recently that I’m not so good at self-promotion, on this score. “If you’d told me before we began working together that your work rate was this high, I’d have hired you twice,” they said. Another client told me they noticed how responsive I was, that I always got back to her when she asked a question. That she felt like she could rely on me under pressure. That she wanted me to know how rare that was in my line of work.
This, then, is me promoting that aspect of myself. But likewise, it’s a bit of a call to arms. There’s honor in hard work, and the pleasure of a job well done. But it’s also not something people who tend to do it consider a major asset in themselves. Or that we tend to talk about. I’m a big fan of Kipling’s poem If, and the idea that you “never breathe a word about your loss.” But we also never breathe a word about our efforts. It’s a curious thing to be shy or modest about. So, hard worker. I see you. Now, repeat after me: “I work hard. And I’m proud of it.”
That’s the spirit!
M
