The Best Way to Rise to the Top of Any Business

What’s the best way to surpass your peers and outdo your competitors?

Work harder than they do.

If that sounds daunting, consider this: Most people don’t work very hard.

Some spend their workdays doing as little as they possibly can. Lots more stay busy, but achieve very little. They write long memos, discuss issues that don’t need much discussion, contest insignificant points, and attend to the tedium.

But only a very few apply themselves — long and hard — to the key challenges that determine success.

Understanding this, you can see that even a modest amount of hard work will put you beyond both the terminally slothful and the lump-along middle crowd. Just by working smart nine hours a day, you will eventually rise to the top echelon of almost any organization.

But getting up the last rung of that ladder will be tough.

At that level, you are competing against other hard and smart workers. And some of them may have advantages you lack. They may brighter. They may be more personable. They may have better contacts.

But there is one thing they don’t have more of than you do — and that is time.

If you can spend more time than they are willing to spend or use your time more effectively, you will move ahead of them.

Fact is, life isn’t fair. When it comes to money, beauty, intelligence, and talent, the distribution is uneven and arbitrary. But one thing we are all given equally is 24 hours a day. What you do with those hours is what will determine your success and happiness.