We all know about working smarter not harder. But Seth Godin has an interesting insight that we often confuse working longer with working harder (or smarter).

Here are a couple of choice quotes (but you should really read the whole thing – especially on Labor Day).

None of the people who are racking up amazing success stories and creating cool stuff are doing it just by working more hours than you are. And I hate to say it, but they’re not smarter than you either. They’re succeeding by doing hard work.

Hard work is about risk. It begins when you deal with the things that you’d rather not deal with: fear of failure, fear of standing out, fear of rejection. Hard work is about training yourself to leap over this barrier, tunnel under that barrier, drive through the other barrier. And, after you’ve done that, to do it again the next day.

Entrepreneurs, especially need to hear that working long is attractive because it helps you avoid the hard stuff while feeling like you’re doing what you should. And the hard stuff that really pays off doesn’t have to take long.

Takeaways:

• Sometimes longer is easier because it helps you avoid facing the really hard decisions.
• If you always feel like there are not enough hours in the day, you’re probably doing it wrong.

UPDATE: I have a client who loves to work 17 hour days (except for weekends when she only works eight). She also wants to grow her company and sell it for 20 million dollars. She doesn’t realize why her long hours will make it harder for her company to be worth that much. Here’s why.

Anyone in a position to pay $20MM for her company, won’t be in a position to step into her job and work those hours. If they have to figure out how many people it will take to replace her, how those people will fit into the organization and how it will affect the bottom line, then the company will be a lot less valuable to them than if she’s already A) figured it out and B) implemented it for enough time to work out the kinks.

Let’s say her company is worth $5 Million today. She can wait till it’s worth 15 before she does those things, OR she can do them now. The sooner she does them, the more pervasive the systems and culture of scalability will be within the company when it is time to sell. That will make it worth more sooner.

The most value she can add is to replace herself so completely that when she does sell, neither the customers, the staff, or the suppliers notice any hiccup at all.

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