Have you earned the right to work less hard?
Readtime: 3 minutes
Your hard work stopped being a competitive advantage years ago.
That might be an uncomfortable thought if you've built your career on it.
But most professionals work hard these days. And I'd argue that the level of effort has increased since 2020, as communication tools have changed expectations.
Working hard is now table stakes.
Which means that the people who stand out at mid-to-senior levels aren't the ones putting in more hours – they're the ones making better decisions about where to put their hours.
Your edge has moved from volume to judgement.
Early in your career, effort makes sense as a strategy. You don't know which things matter yet, so you do all of them thoroughly. You stay late. You over-prepare. You say yes to everything. And it works because at that stage, hard work genuinely does compensate for inexperience.
But at some point, that should change. And I think the shift is one of the most valuable things you can learn to make.
First, you work hard on everything.
Then you learn to work hard on the right things.
Here’s an example:
Two people are preparing for the same board meeting. One spends the weekend refining every slide, rehearsing transitions, polishing data tables. The other spends an hour thinking about the three things the board actually cares about, builds a deck around those, and uses the rest of the time pressure-testing their recommendation.
The first person might walk in with the stronger ‘presentation’, but the second person probably walks in with more influence – because they put their effort where it mattered most and used their judgement more.
The final stage is when you learn to tell the difference between the things that just need to be done well enough and the things that genuinely need to be done brilliantly. And you give each the appropriate effort, not the same effort.
This last part is where judgement really lives. Because most things at work just need to be good enough to move them forward. Only a small number of things need to be exceptional.
The skill is knowing which is which – and having the confidence to give a B+ to something that doesn't need an A. My Quality and Responsibility Matrix is a tool to categorise your work along these lines, with the added dimension of what actually falls into your responsibility.
The reason this shift is hard to make is that for a lot of ambitious people, being a "hard worker" is part of who they are. It's how you were raised. How you got through school. How you built your career. Being a hard worker is often one of the first things you get praised for. So it makes sense that it becomes your default mode – it's served you well for a long time.
But I think there's a more powerful mode available to you now. One that uses everything you've learned so far in your career to be more deliberate about where your energy goes.
Not working less, but working with more precision.
Giving your best effort to the things that genuinely need it, and giving yourself permission to do the rest at a level that's good enough.
Your company would benefit from this too. Because the most valuable thing a senior person can offer isn't more hours. It's better decisions. And better decisions tend to come from people who have the space to think clearly, not from people who are exhausted from treating everything as equally important.
The whole point of experience is that over time, it should replace effort. Not all of it. But enough that you're spending less energy on the things that used to be hard and more on the things that actually need you.
Here's something worth trying. Look at your next week and put everything into one of two categories: "requires my judgement" or "requires my effort." Then see if you can shift the balance of time more toward the first list.
Because that's where your real value is. And there's a lot to be gained – for you and for the people around you – from spending more of your time there.
Give it a try and let me know how it goes.
Thanks for reading.
Mostyn
P.S. Want to get promoted to a senior level so you can get paid more for your judgment than for your time? My new YouTube video “Do This At Work in 2026, You Will Get Promoted Fast” shows you how.