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Despite this, Too Much Work is what fills most of our time in graduate school. From 1L core classes where people worked hours upon hours per day. To Accounting and DECS (e.g. stats)at Kellogg where people struggled to learn the material with limited time and resources. To recruiting for law jobs and consulting jobs, where we have to prep over and over and over for interviews. It seems like no matter what you are doing, there is a lot of work you need to do to success. And if you don’t do it, then you’ll be behind the other people that are.  But if you do, then there is often a pretty nice reward at the end of the tunnel. So people have incentive to just keep working hard do that a lot here.

On the other hand, Tough Work scary.  You don’t know if you have enough time to finish and sometimes you don’t know if you can even do the work. Further, we may get the answers wrong. We may not land the job we worked so hard to get. And we may end up failing in the end. And so people shy away from Tough Work because more risk is built in.

I propose the idea that Tough Work is best when it comes after Too Much Work. Because with Too Much Work, you practice working hard, build up your stamina and gain relevant skills that will help. Likewise, after a lot of Tough Work, those who thrive are usually looking for things that are more challenging.

I also propose the idea that we should all be sure you switch to Tough Work. Risk our perfect grades and not knowing everything in the class. Otherwise, you won’t leverage the benefits of the hard work you’ve put in and you won’t really become any better than you were before.