Hard work is a curious thing.

Its almost universally regarded as “the way to go”, especially if you want to be successful. Parents advise their children to “work hard to achieve what you want in life”.

I don’t disagree with this. As far as it goes.

The problem is that hard work, at least the way that I define it in the book Freedom Entrepreneur, can be immensely damaging. So damaging, that it can cause not only the failure of your business, but also a degradation in your health and loss of personal relationships.

So what is hard work, and why should be avoided? This article answers those questions.

But first, I’d like to admit that I am guilty of having engaged in hard work. Which led to burnout.

I did hard work because I was terrified of failure, because I didn’t imagine there could be any realistic alternative, and because hard work became an addiction.

I believed, simply because I didn’t know any better, that hard work was a necessary part of creating a successful business.

The reality, and this I now know with absolute conviction, is that hard work is NOT necessary for business success. In fact, its counterproductive.

So what is hard work? Hard work, for entrepreneurs, has two aspects. The first is obvious. The second, not so much.

1. Excessive quantities of work

Of course, there is nothing wrong with some hard work.

The problem is that as time goes on, the behavior of hard work becomes self-reinforcing. The more you do it, the more it becomes necessary to do it, and the more challenging it is to change things for the better.

Most entrepreneurs become obsessive in the amount of work that they do. Working within the business takes up the vast majority of their non-sleep time.

On a scale of priorities, hard-working entrepreneurs tend to regard the activity of working as more important than everything except eating and breathing (and, often, they even forget to eat).

2. The wrong type of work

Most entrepreneurs do the wrong type of work. The wrong type of work is actually very hard work indeed.

If you are a frantically busy entrepreneur, especially if you are working alone, it’s likely that almost everything you are doing is the wrong type of work.

whAT’s the alternative?

Hard work has the opposite effect to that which most people anticipate. Rather than leading to certain success, it makes business failure much more likely.

This is because the best qualities of the entrepreneur are obscured by hard work.

If they had the time to think about it, business creators would realize that the hard work they are doing is not sustainable. And that it will eventually result in poor health, loss of friends and burnout.

Hard work stymied the success of my business because it prevented me from being effective. Hard work, though irresistible to me at the time, was in fact my worst enemy. It eventually led to personal breakdown.

The alternative to hard work is entrepreneurial work.

Entrepreneurial work is something that very few entrepreneurs do. It entails a change of focus and a change of thinking. It necessitates looking at the big picture and taking a realistic view of your best qualities. It requires you to put your freedom first.

Freedom Entrepreneur strives to give business creators the tools they need to avoid burnout and to maximize profit