Hard Work is Overrated

The key insight from this snip is that hard work is overrated as the main factor for success. It is not that hard work is a bad thing, but it is overrated because what you do and the projects you choose to work on are far more important than how hard you work. The speaker gives the example of people in the restaurant industry who work very hard but may not be successful. The most critical decision is project selection, as choosing the right projects can make a huge difference in success. The speaker challenges the idea that we should just pick a major and then spend the rest of our lives working hard. They found that picking the right projects and working hard enough were sufficient for their own success. They believe that hard work is maybe the fourth or fifth most important factor for success, with what you work on and who you work with being more important. They argue that there is a threshold of work that needs to be reached, but going beyond that threshold and working excessively long hours has less of an effect on success than people think. Hard work is not the only ingredient for success, and there are other higher leverage points that can maximize the impact of hard work.