If you’re reading this, you probably don’t do hard work

The text argues that designers, programmers, entrepreneurs, investors, and similar roles often describe their work as hard, but that label does not fit the kind of labor they do. Hard work is presented as physically demanding, low-status, and difficult to find people willing to do, like farm work, construction, or exhausting shift labor.

It separates hard work from challenging, creative, or skilled work. Coding, writing, strategy, sales, budgeting, brainstorming, networking, and long hours can be demanding, but they are not hard work in the sense the essay uses. Enjoyment, intelligence, effort, and repeated attempts do not change that distinction.

Reading notes

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• The essay contrasts office and knowledge work with physically punishing labor such as picking lettuce in extreme heat, construction, and multiple low-wage jobs.
• It says hard work is the kind of work people avoid, while many people actively want jobs like programming, design, strategy, or investing.
• It treats coding, writing, sales calls, spreadsheets, social media marketing, buying ads, and due diligence as work, but not hard work.
• It distinguishes hard work from work that is challenging, creative, skilled, or slow to resolve.
• It says long hours, brainstorming, networking, meetings, commuting, and giving opinions are not what make work hard.
• It argues that enjoying the work, being good at it, or solving problems does not turn it into hard work.
• It ends by urging people to do good, creative, and thoughtful work without flattering themselves about how hard it was.