> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://weeknightreview.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # You need harder work - URL: https://weeknightreview.com/you-need-harder-work/ - Published: 2026-09-10T23:00:11.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-10T23:00:10.000Z - Description: At a certain point, getting better stops being about working harder and becomes about finding harder work. - Author: Kevin Fischer One of the biggest grifts in self improvement is the Hustle. The promise goes something like this: keep your head down, say no to anything that doesn’t align with your pursuit of success, do the little things a zillion times, and eventually, through some magical meritocratic process you’ll have made your way through the cruft of mediocrity to build a life of Lamborghinis, ladies, and luxury. I’d love to take this entire worldview and shred it to pieces, but underneath the absurdity there are some important things to learn. But before we get to the good, let’s quickly address the ugly. First, it’s important to recognize that hustle is packaged and sold as an ambition unto itself. Being a hustler is as much an identity as the actual underlying craft underneath, if there is one. Truthfully, if you encounter someone with hustle who has legitimate success, you’re witnessing **survivorship bias**. Second, personal development is empty when it doesn’t account for the parts of your life that make you truly human. Craft and skills are critical, but so is a life of love, balance, and selflessness. You may find tremendous joy in the daily grind of growth, but it’s also healthy and useful to share life with others - a sentiment that hustle culture routinely discards in favor of selfish pursuits. But there’s one thing hustlers are right about - getting better takes extraordinary time and discipline. Some have estimated that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert. That’s only partially correct. You could spend 10,000 hours practicing skiing, but if you only ever tackled the bunny hill, you wouldn’t be much further at the thousandth hour compared to the hundredth. Which means mastery is also a function of **challenge**. Here’s how it works: 1. Choose a skill to work on 2. Practice until it becomes routine (brain is rewired) 3. Work on a more challenging progression in the skill 4. Practice until it becomes routine (brain is rewired) 5. Repeat steps 3 & 4 The “10,000 hours” sentiment exists because that’s roughly how long it takes to reach extreme proficiency in a skill when someone invests quality time with increasing challenges. The act of taking on a new challenge and practicing until it becomes routine is hard. It’s stressful. It’s also how our brains take the new skill and upload it to the part of our brain that knows it intimately, making the knowledge automatic. It’s largely understood that one of the most competitive periods in NBA history occurred from the late 1980s to the late 90s. It was a freakish time where some of the greatest to ever play all competed with each other at the same time. Winning championships during this time was substantially harder than any other period of basketball due to the insane amount of talent depth and star power active at the same time - Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, Karl Malone, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Hakeem Olajuwon, and many others. Contenders had to pass through a gauntlet of GOATs and 55-win teams in a punishingly physical period of the game. As good as Michael Jordan was, the Detroit Pistons ended the Bulls’ seasons three years in a row. They literally created the “Jordan Rules” to strategically handle Michael and force the Bulls into playing a game they didn’t want to play. But in 1991, the Bulls swept the Pistons. Not because they got lucky, but because the challenges of the previous years forced them to adapt and grow. It forced Michael Jordan to develop himself into the type of player capable of handling the punishing competition the Pistons presented. This story is chronicled well in *The Last Dance*. But I’ll warn you that watching it may inspire you to run through a wall for your dreams when you’re done, even if you don’t normally care for basketball. Competition forces us to confront weakness. We cannot merely be good at a few things and expect to get by. Speed running the bunny hill a hundred times won’t equip us with the tools and skills needed to navigate the twists and turns of the black diamond. Challenges are valuable because they provide unique feedback to where we are and raise new questions about ourselves that demand answers. We’re forced to raise our standards and begin the learning process that promises to rewire our brains. So where are these challenges? In the real world there aren’t structured tournaments or teams scheduled to compete against in an organized manner with defined rules. That’s both good and bad. Good, because we don’t have to wake up every day knowing we’ll be put to a uniquely challenging mental or physical test just to survive. But it’s bad, because it places the responsibility on us to define the roadmap. But that’s okay, because we have agency to influence our development. Challenges are rarely offered with clarity, especially as you grow. They have to be chased. Growing your expertise has two sides: dominating your current skill level and charting a course to the next skill level. **Dominating your current level** There is no substitute for time and practice. When I was coming up as a software engineer, I prioritized building small projects with my current skills. In a hands-on profession, creation has no rival. It’s important to read and study, but I grew more comfortable with my current skills by saturating myself in the craft, making meaningful mistakes that taught lessons, and building a body of work that reflected the depth of my capabilities, even with efforts that served no purpose other than to satisfy my hunger to grow. Another strategy for securing your current level is teaching. This can be anything from annoying others in the car with you to mentoring someone else. It might feel like you need to be leagues ahead of anyone to be qualified to teach, but you only have to be one level ahead or have a unique experience to share knowledge with others. You will eventually reach a period of relative boredom in your career, where the tasks feel trivial and you’re naturally less interested in the work. It may even feel like you’ve reached the end of what this career can offer. This is when it’s time to go exploring for something new. **Finding the next level** If you’re diligent, you’ll be on the lookout for the next level while you’re in your current stage. Scouting for opportunities to grow when you’re ready for them. In software engineering, it’s common to reach a high level as an individual contributor and consider moving into management. It’s a valid change, but risky for engineers because the skill set required to develop and lead a team is inherently different from the merits that carried you to your current level of success. The more appropriate challenge would be to explore a deeper level of technical or cultural mastery. Learning to lead and mentor, or investing into a more architectural role are both branches that an engineering career could easily take. Early in my career I made strong efforts to shadow anyone ahead of me and be in the room when the most interesting problems came up. The exposure to how leaders thought and approached work helped me build a mental map of where I wanted to go after I felt confident in my current stage. But if you’re deep into your career and struggling to find clear, linear levels to growth, volunteering for strange committees or projects is a stellar way to find new branches. Even in fast-paced crafts there remain significant places to grow if you’re on the lookout. And it’s often found in the form of a new, big challenge like a project, person, or in some cases, a company. At a certain point, getting better stops being about working harder and becomes about finding harder work.