excellence, actually4 Sep 2025

How Hard Should You Be Working?

What role should work play in your life? How hard should you be working? And how can you do it in a way that's sustainable over years, or even decades? These aren't simple questions to answer, even if both the "grind like crazy to get ahead" and the "find your bliss" sets tell you that they are. Today, we've enlisted the help of Cal Newport to discuss healthy ways to think about how hard, meaningful work might fit into your life. You'll learn the difference between hard work and work that’s hard to do, why taking lessons from exceptional outliers might hurt more than help, a three-question heuristic that’ll help you evaluate tradeoffs between work and life, and how knowing your maximum effective dose can change how you think about exertion.

Unedited transcript: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ztEstpIhcaz7tCYne9QRxa4rtXH6kVnnCQEDx8rtIU0/edit?usp=sharing

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