Adopting a diligent work ethic in your life will set you up with the best possible chances of turning your dreams into goals, writing those goals down, and turning them into reality—one day at a time.
Here’s the thing about goal setting.
When you write down your goals for the future in a specific, logical, sensible, and sustainable fashion, you effectively create a roadmap to success.
You create a plan for the future that, when followed, will lead you to the life you’ve always dreamed of.
This is how ambitious, success-oriented people organize their lives and figure out how to invest their time, energy, and effort in the wisest manner possible, every single day.
But here’s another thing to understand about goals.
While setting goals and writing them down is a huge part of the process, it’s also important that you actually invest the time and effort required to bring those goals to fruition.
And a diligent work ethic is often the next piece of the puzzle that, when fitted together with a cohesive and goal-oriented plan of action, can yield massive successful results.
So in this post, you’re going to learn five reasons for why you should consider embodying a diligent work ethic in your life, starting today.
Working hard really matters.
And if you struggle with it in your day-to-day life, these reasons may help you to understand some of the reasons for why developing such a work ethic can be so powerful for your future.
Let’s jump into it.
What Is A Diligent Work Ethic?
To understand what a diligent work ethic actually is, we first need to define the word diligent.
Merriam Webster’s Dictionary defines the word ‘diligent’ as follows:
“Characterized by steady, earnest, and energetic effort.”
In other words, being diligent about your work means showing and demonstrating that you care enough about that work to put the full focus of your effort into accomplishing it every day.
Caring about your work is really the keyword here.
The main difference between people who don’t have a diligent work ethic and those who do is simply this:
People with a diligent work ethic obviously care a great deal about what they’re doing; enough so that they’re driven to do it right, with the full force of their focus and energy behind it.
Setting goals can actually help you to develop a more diligent work ethic, especially if you figure out what your purpose is; though sometimes that’s not the whole solution either.
Sometimes, you still need to learn to develop a diligent work ethic as a productive habit in your day (much like a goal-setting habit) to help carry yourself forward and put serious momentum behind the goals that matter to you.
Alright, now that we’ve talked about what a diligent work ethic is, let’s talk about five reasons for why it’s important to embody this in your life if you really want to achieve success.
1. To Make Progress On Your Goals
Simply put, it takes work to move your goals forward.
For example:
If you set a goal to save $1,000, there are several steps that you’ll need to take in order to make that goal a reality.
You’ll need to go to work, earn some money, set a certain amount of that money aside every time you get paid, and eventually work your way up to having $1,000 in your savings account.
Each one of these steps requires action to move forward.
Thus, it’s in your best interest to work diligently toward your set goals—because this actually helps you to move them forward, which brings you closer to success.
2. To Get More Accomplished At A Faster Rate
Work input has a direct impact on progress.
In other words, if you dedicate one hour of smart, diligent work towards your goals each week, you’re going to get exactly half as much accomplished as you would if you committed two hours per week toward the same goals.
Working diligently (i.e., working like you care about what you’re doing) helps you to move your goals forward at a faster rate.
The more of it you do, the faster you’ll achieve success.
This is why SMART goals include a time-sensitive/deadline component. You always want to set a timeframe for your goals to maximize your potential.
3. To Avoid The Trap Of Stagnation
Sometimes, people write down a list of things that they’d like to achieve in life—but then they fail to take action to help create these success items for themselves.
This can be a real problem.
In fact, some people even fall into the trap of believing that if they write things down, they can even achieve those things without really putting any work into it.
But here’s the thing.
Of course, writing down your goals is always a great idea.
However, if that process of goal setting isn’t paired with a diligent work ethic, odds are that you’re actually going to end up stagnating instead of making serious forward progress.
Working diligently to accomplish your goals is 50% of the puzzle. It’s incredibly, unfathomably important to success.
4. To Build Up Momentum
Sometimes, working diligently is difficult.
This is especially true if you’re not used to it.
It can be mentally, physically, and even emotionally draining.
However, it’s also true that when you work hard at the things that matter to you, you can build up momentum to get even more done.
When this happens, you’ll tend to level up your confidence and your longevity, and equip yourself to get even more done in the future.
To be really honest, when you commit to making your diligent work ethic a habit, it becomes something that you get better at the more you do it.
It’s also something that tends to give you compounding results over time.
In other words, getting started is really the most important step.
Then, you need to follow through by staying consistent and continuing to show up, day in and day out.
When you do these two things, you’ll tend to find that not only will your motivation increase, but your work output will also increase.
And this momentum will help you to accomplish your goals faster and more efficiently.
5. To Prove To Yourself That You’re Capable
Sometimes, it’s easy to doubt that we have the capability of achieving our goals.
It can be easy to look at your dreams and rule them out as being too difficult to reach.
But here’s the thing.
I’ve never met a human yet who wasn’t far more capable than they believed they were.
Odds are very good that you have a tremendous amount of untapped potential within you that you don’t even know about.
And embodying a diligent work ethic gives you the perfect opportunity to not only unlock this potential within yourself, but to also prove to yourself that it exists.
Every time you work diligently to succeed at your goals, you’re basically taking a shot.
It’s like stepping up to the plate and swinging at a pitch, or stepping up to the free-throw line and shooting a basketball.
If you never give yourself a chance, how will you ever succeed?
Or, as Wayne Gretzky said it…
“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”
Diligently working toward our goals gives us the chance to prove ourselves—not just to the world, but also to ourselves.
And this is a tremendously important factor in success.
Conclusion
Hopefully, this post has helped you to understand why embodying a diligent work ethic is the best plan for helping you to achieve your goals as efficiently as possible.
Of course, you don’t need to work yourself into the ground.
Rest can be just as important as work in some certain situations.
But here’s the thing.
A life absent of a diligent work ethic is going to leave that individual with less progress made toward their goals at the end of the day.
And every day, each one of us has an important question to answer.
Am I going to work diligently today to accomplish my goals? Or am I going to put it off for another day?
My sincere hope is for each one of us to make an agreement with ourselves to work diligently to accomplish the things we desire.
I believe that you’re capable.
And I believe that adopting this one simple attribute will really help to supercharge your efforts and help you to achieve success in ways that you never thought were possible.
In other words, I believe in you—and I believe that you’ve got what it takes to make it.
So let’s get out there and get to work.
Best wishes…
Jay O’Donnell