How many articles have you read where someone says something is overrated? Leadership is overrated. Talent is overrated. Your sense of self worth is overrated. Athletes are overrated. I agree with every sentiment that has ever been written on something being overrated. I will tell you why in a minute. What I don’t hear about being overrated is doing work.
So back to my point about agreeing with every article that has called something overrated. Think about the amount of information that we are exposed to. The depth and breadth of the information as well as the speed with which we get it almost guarantees that we are going to beat certain stories to death. An athlete gets a DUI? We are on it. A royal wedding? We are going to bury you with information that you could give a shit about because somewhere some person is soaking it all in while shining their collector’s edition royal wedding plates.
When you think about it, if you are important enough to garner attention in the first place, there is no way that you won’t become overrated due to the fact that we stack layer upon layer of importance on topics and people until you can’t stack it any higher. Then we knock it down by calling it or them overrated.
A recent article in BNET about leadership being overrated got me thinking about this today. In the article it talked about leading in place of doing real work. We tend to want to lead the team that does the work rather than do the work itself. Meanwhile we aren’t actually doing the things that we should be doing and ultimately not achieving the results that we want to achieve.
I have spent a lot of time talking about clarity recently as a means for achieving results. From mission statements to values and how to structure the creation process, it only makes sense if there is action behind it. In other words, doing work. Do work son! This was a phrase commonly heard from the Rob and Big show on MTV. Business coaches they are not but the phrase always stuck with me because it is about doing work.
If you are looking for real results in your business or career, the only way you are going to get the results that want is from working your ass off doing the right kind of work. If you aren’t sure of the difference between real and fake work then check out this book review.
Success is always going to be achieved by those who want to put the time and effort into making it happen. Other techniques, strategies and lessons come and go but real work never dies. What are about you? Do you think that work is overrated? If so, in what ways?