Too Much Work? or Tough Work?

Too Much Work is what we have as 1Ls in law school. We have to read 500 pages for our classes. Be prepared to get cold called. And outline for each class. We also have a lot of this work at times in business school. Tough Work is what we have in some of our third year law school (3L) classes. Just this week, we had to read an empirical paper about Renegotiating Debt Contracts, synthesize a short yet complete list of disparate ideas and create a 30 page presentation that only presented the study to the class but also kept them interested and pointed out potential flaws in the paper. And we have to do that in just two days time.

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.

Wednesday, January 11th, 2012 Business School

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Jeremy C Wilson is a JD-MBA alumni using his site to share information on education, the social enterprise revolution, entrepreneurship, and doing things differently. Feel free to send along questions or comments as you read.

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The contents of this blog are mine personally and do not reflect the views or position of Kellogg, Northwestern Law, the JD-MBA program, or any firm that I work for. I only offer my own perspective on all issues.
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