THE TRUE DEFINITION OF DILIGENCE

"Diligence is a learnable skill that combines: creative persistence, a smart-working effort rightly planned and rightly performed in a timely, efficient, and effective manner to attain a result that is pure and of the highest quality of excellence."
-Steven K Scott

I read Steven Scott's book "The Richest Man Who Ever Lived" a couple of years ago and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It reminded me of... well the Book of Proverbs; a bunch of little nuggets of wisdom. I decided to pick the book off the shelf and start reading it again and the very first chapter speaks of diligence, but not as it's known today. Our American slang tends to change definitions over time, I blame Dr. Seuss, but what do I know. True diligence is much more than hard work. Scott gives a lengthy definition which I've provided above, but he also boils it down to two words in his book, "smart-working".

I've seen so many people in this generation, which has welcomed the "Generation Me" label with open arms, *lower head in shame here* think that they are above hard work because of the technology they were raised with. "How quickly the world owes (them) something." -Louis CK. The original definition of diligence is a combination of working smarter AND working harder.

I've started several businesses and worked just as hard in each one. The part that I was missing in the beginning was the "smart" part of working. I have learned the hard way that most of the time it's not enough to just work hard. You really have to be smart about the time and effort you're putting into something. If a transaction is going to take months to complete and consume hours of my time, I need to weigh my compensation verses the labor I put into it. I read a study recently that said the average executive makes $75/hr. When you get into business look at the end goal first, usually the compensation. Figure out how many hours it will take you to reach that goal and calculate how much you will make per hour. Then it's up to you to decide if it is worth the time and effort. The goal is to have you determine how much you make and not someone else.