Here’s a question for you: are you working hard or working long? If you think the two are the same, go read this post by Seth Godin in full (not a bad idea anyway). Here’s the gist of it:

Sure, you’re working long, but “long” and “hard” are now two different things. In the old days, we could measure how much grain someone harvested or how many pieces of steel he made. Hard work meant more work. But the past doesn’t lead to the future. The future is not about time at all. The future is about work that’s really and truly hard, not time-consuming. It’s about the kind of work that requires us to push ourselves, not just punch the clock. Hard work is where our job security, our financial profit, and our future joy lie.

Here’s a few ways to tell the difference when it comes to your own self-funded software company:

Working Long:

• There’s no on or off anymore - you’re working any and all the time you’re awake.
• Your family has stopped complaining about you missing family things.
• You can’t remember the last full day - let alone two or ten - you didn’t work at your microISV.
• You never seem to get through everything you need to in a day.
• The harder (actually longer) you work, the more you feel like you are slipping behind.

Working Hard:

• You take the time to fix and/or document once and for all the top ten issues with your microISV product.
• You research, start, work through and complete a 12 to 18 month marketing plan for your software.
• You do a blogging plan in the same way.
• You make that difficult emotional decision about your microISV you’ve been putting off. Examples: admitting your company needs a whole new web site. To start charging 30% more than you did when you launched 3 years ago. To hire your first employee. To develop the app you really want to develop, even though it has nothing to do with the app you are selling.
• To fire your spouse - because as hard as they try, they don’t get tech stuff and they’re slowing you down.
• To go to work for your spouse - because they’re better at keeping to a budget, focusing singlemindedly on what needs to be done and care a lot less about your software baby so they can see it’s faults.

We are so over the era - the industrial era - where working long meant you pulling double shifts on the assembly line and therefore your take home pay went up. We are so done bragging about how many hours we work hard at work - when all we are doing is working long. And we are so done trying to fit what we do and the online world we do it in into the old industrial cookie cutter mode of time and business management - it does not work.

So here’s my question for you again: are you working merely long or are you ready to start working hard?

[tags]microISV[/tags]