In today's fast-paced world, many people struggle with their relationships with work. The pressure to constantly perform, meet deadlines, and achieve more can turn work into a burden rather than a fulfilling experience. I used to feel this way too. I’d dread the thought of going to work if I was working a 9-5 job.
Even when I was self-employed, the idea of putting pen to paper or diving into whatever tasks I’d assigned myself on a given day stressed me out. However, I discovered a few techniques and insights that helped me overcome this barrier. If you read until the end of this article, I believe you’ll be able to use these same strategies and techniques and make work simpler for you.
By following these steps, you’ll not only improve your work experience but also boost your overall well-being and happiness.
Table of Contents- How to Make Hard Work Easy
Step 1: Understand Your Current Relationship with Work
The first step in making hard work easy is to fully understand your current relationship with work. Many people don’t realize how much their emotional connection to their job impacts their overall productivity and happiness. Chances are, the work you do makes up about 80% of your life. If you’re going to dedicate that much time to something, why not make it at least fairly enjoyable?
Assess Your Feelings About Work
Start by asking yourself some introspective questions:
Do you feel a sense of fulfillment and purpose in your work?
Are you often stressed or anxious about tasks and deadlines?
Do you look forward to work each day, or do you dread it?
These questions can reveal how you genuinely feel about your job and highlight areas that may need adjustment. If you frequently feel stressed, anxious, or unmotivated, it's a sign that there's a disconnect between you and your work. Acknowledging these feelings is the first step toward creating a healthier relationship with work.
Take time to jot down your thoughts. According to Psychology Today, recognizing your emotional patterns can help you identify the root causes of work dissatisfaction.
Identify Patterns in Your Work Life
It’s equally important to recognize patterns in your work life. Are there particular times of the day or week when you feel more stressed? Are there specific tasks that seem to drain your energy? By identifying patterns, such as poor work-life balance, lack of job satisfaction, or tense interactions with colleagues, you can start pinpointing what's making work feel harder than it should. This will help you focus on specific areas to improve.
Look at different aspects of your work life, such as:
Work-life balance: Are you able to separate personal time from work, or are they always entangled?
Job satisfaction: Do you enjoy what you do, or does it feel monotonous?
Colleague interactions: Are you engaged in positive relationships with your coworkers or managers?
Recognizing these patterns can help pinpoint areas that need adjustment. For example, research has shown that poor relationships with colleagues can lead to a decrease in motivation and increase job dissatisfaction. This makes sense, right? Why would you want to work around someone who drains your energy or leaves a bad taste in your mouth, so to speak?
Your relationship with work doesn’t just stay at the office—it spills over into your personal life as well. If work leaves you drained, it can decrease motivation, lower productivity, and have a negative impact on your mental health. It’s crucial to recognize how these work-related emotions affect your overall well-being, as they can influence relationships, physical health, and happiness. By gaining clarity about your current work situation, you can start implementing changes that will ease the burden.
Step 2: Explore the Root Causes of Work Discontent
Once you've identified your emotions and patterns, the next step is to dig deeper into the root causes of any dissatisfaction or stress at work. Understanding why you feel the way you do is key to finding a solution. Identifying why you might be unhappy at work or with the work that you consistently do is the next step toward improvement. Often, dissatisfaction stems from underlying issues that go unaddressed. One of my core philosophies regarding Happiness is that your personal happiness level is a construction of your Expectations colliding with Reality.
As humans, we are unhappy when we expect something to go one way, only to find the reality is misaligned. Of course, when reality is favorable, we get excited similar to someone stumbling across a $100 bill. But more often, our imaginations paint a vivid, yet unrealistic view of how a scenario will play out. Then, once reality catches up, we easily spot and focus on the negatives, similar to seeing an attractive dating profile only to meet up with him or her and discover that you’ve been catfished.
When I graduated from Penn State University in 2017, I had big ambitions. In my mind, college was holding me back. Once I was able to break free from my collegiate chains, I’d be ready to conquer the world. But reality slapped me hard in the face. After graduating, despite taking the LSATs and scoring decently, I postponed my law school career. I decided to work in the meantime.
The problem—no decent job wanted to hire me. I put out endless applications and consistently faced your standard it’s not you, it’s us emails that are automatically generated once the companies' robots parse your resume and (mistakenly) determine you’re not a good fit. So, I worked a variety of different jobs to barely pay the bills. I was a SAT, English, and Time Management tutor for Elementary and High School students, I worked at a high-end apparel store known as Brooks Brothers, I was on a small real estate team, and I worked at American Eagle at the local outlet in Leesburg, VA where I lived at the time.
Needless to say, I was pretty unhappy. At the time I didn’t take an introspective journey. I knew I was happy but I didn’t know why I was unhappy. It wasn’t until years later when I began trying to debate my emotions and think critically about my actions that I realized my unhappiness came from my identity being shattered.
In my mind, I had a certain view of myself: Smart, Penn State Graduate, above average IQ, extremely hardworking, intuitive, innovative, handsome, modest, and humble. But my reality pushed against my perception of myself. How could I be so smart, intuitive, and innovative when I can only work a job that doesn’t even require a degree?
Why am I working so hard only to be paid so little? My reality dictated that I wasn’t special. My reality dictated that I was meant to be a minimum-wage employee. Not a conqueror as I once thought. Years later, luck shone a ray upon me. I received a call from one of the law firms I applied to years prior. The principal attorney and owner of the firm called and said he was impressed with my resume and wanted to do an interview. Fast forward a few months and I was working at a law firm with my own office.
This made me happy. And I was happy because the role and job I was performing felt congruent to my perception of myself. If you have any unhappiness or discontent in your workplace or in a career you’ve chosen, question if the job itself is congruent with how you view yourself. Humans are designed to remain consistent with their view of themselves—their identity. Also, be sure to manage your expectations. All career choices will make you unhappy if you expect to be the CEO after one year of working after college. It’s okay to have dreams and desires but it’s crucial to be realistic at times too.
Common Sources of Work Discontent
Some of the most common factors that contribute to work-related stress include:
Unclear job expectations: Feeling unsure about what’s expected from you leads to frustration.
Lack of growth opportunities: When there’s no path for career development, you may feel stuck.
Toxic work culture: A negative workplace environment can drain your energy.
A 2019 study from Gallup revealed that employees who feel they have growth opportunities at work report a 43% higher sense of engagement. Addressing these issues is key to learning how to make hard work easier.
Assessing what matters most to you is crucial because it defines the direction and purpose of your work. When you focus on what truly brings you fulfillment, whether it’s the impact of your work, personal growth, or alignment with your values, it becomes easier to stay motivated and engaged. While a paycheck is undeniably important, it’s the sense of meaning and satisfaction that sustains long-term happiness in your career.
Prioritizing fulfillment over financial rewards helps ensure that you’re not just working for a salary but for a deeper sense of purpose that fuels your passion, creativity, and overall well-being. Ultimately, when your career aligns with your core values, it brings more than just financial stability—it brings lasting contentment and a sense of accomplishment that money alone can’t provide.
Solutions to Combat Discontent
Once you've identified the root causes, focus on creating actionable solutions:
Clarify expectations: Have an open conversation with your manager about your role.
Seek growth opportunities: Consider taking additional training or exploring new projects within your company.
Improve your environment: Shift your perspective on difficult coworkers, or if necessary, look for new job opportunities.
Step 3: Define Your Goals
Clear goals provide direction and a sense of purpose, making work feel less overwhelming and more manageable.
To transform your approach to work, it’s essential to define clear, actionable goals. When you have a clear direction, work becomes easier to navigate, and you’ll find more meaning in your daily tasks.
Set SMART Goals
Using the SMART framework will keep your goals focused and achievable. Ensure they are:
Specific: Clearly outline what you want to achieve.
Measurable: Have metrics in place to track your progress.
Achievable: Set goals that are realistic.
Relevant: Ensure the goals align with your career or personal aspirations.
Time-bound: Assign deadlines to each goal.
For example, if you want to enhance your productivity, set a specific goal like “finish three important tasks by noon every day.”
Align Goals with Interests
One way to make work easier is to align your goals with your personal interests. When your tasks resonate with what you love doing, they feel less like work and more like passion projects. Identify what excites you about your role, and steer your goals toward that direction. For example, if you enjoy problem-solving, set a goal to work on more complex projects that challenge your skills.
Break Down Larger Goals
Big goals can feel daunting. Instead, break them into smaller, actionable tasks. For instance, if you want to get a promotion, start by improving your performance on small projects and then expand.
Research shows that breaking goals into smaller tasks significantly increases the likelihood of success.
Step 4: Align Your Work with Your Vision
Aligning your work with your personal vision is essential for achieving a deep sense of fulfillment and purpose. When your day-to-day tasks resonate with your values and long-term goals, each action you take becomes inherently meaningful. Your perception of your work plays a significant role in this alignment—when you engage in tasks that you genuinely believe in or love, the work itself becomes the reward. Instead of constantly looking for external validation or financial compensation, you feel a natural sense of accomplishment. This intrinsic motivation fuels your passion, leading to greater satisfaction and a more sustained drive to excel.
On the other hand, stepping into roles that don’t align with your vision can quickly drain your energy and enthusiasm, no matter how enticing the initial perks may seem. Many people fall into the trap of pursuing high-paying careers only to discover that the work feels unfulfilling, causing them to dread their daily routine. Considering how much of your life is spent working, choosing a job solely for financial gain can leave you feeling disconnected and frustrated—essentially signing up to dislike a significant portion of your life. By staying true to your personal vision and avoiding distractions that steer you away from it, you ensure that your work not only supports your goals but also enhances your overall quality of life.
Identify Your Long-Term Vision
Ask yourself:
What does success look like for you in the next 5, 10, or 15 years?
What kind of life do you want to live?
When you’re clear on your vision, you can take actions today that will help bring you closer to that goal.
Recently, I read the book Total Recall by Arnold Schwarzenegger and watched his Netflix docuseries Arnold on Netflix. If there’s anyone who was ever committed to their vision, it was Arnold Schwarzenegger. In both the book and the series, he shares a story of how, after his bodybuilding career skyrocketed, he was offered an opportunity to run a gym. The offer was amazing—a 6-figure salary. Any normal person would jump at the opportunity to make that much money. Especially considering Arnold was still in his early 30s at the time and this was during the 60s and 70s when the spending power was significantly greater than it is today. At that time, a 6-figure income might as well have been millions.
This would have been a dream job for many, as Arnold was already a major figure in the fitness world. However, Arnold turned down the offer. He knew that while it was a tempting and lucrative option, it didn’t align with his bigger vision of becoming a Hollywood star. So, he turned it down and pursued his acting career despite the many rejections and spending nearly 10 years of being unable to find a suitable role for himself.
Arnold’s decision reflects his laser-focused pursuit of acting. He saw that running a gym, while comfortable, would pull him away from his long-term goal of making it in the movie industry. His relentless drive to enter Hollywood was rooted in his passion for performance and storytelling, and he was willing to take risks—even turning down a seemingly great career path—because he believed in something greater.
By choosing to stay committed to his vision, Arnold went on to achieve massive success in film, eventually landing roles like Conan the Barbarian and The Terminator, which gave him the exposure he was looking for, proving that aligning your work with your true ambitions, rather than settling for immediate rewards, is often the key to lasting fulfillment.
Evaluate Your Current Work
If your current job doesn’t align with your long-term vision, it’s crucial to identify ways to close the gap and bring your professional life more in line with your personal goals. This might involve taking proactive steps within your current role, such as seeking out new responsibilities that are more aligned with your passions or interests. By doing so, you can create opportunities for growth and fulfillment without necessarily changing jobs.
Alternatively, you might consider enrolling in a training or development program to acquire new skills that can help you transition into a more meaningful role, either within your current company or in a different industry. If these adjustments aren’t enough, it might be time to seriously evaluate whether a career shift is needed to better align your work with your vision for the future. This may seem daunting, but taking action now can lead to greater satisfaction and long-term success.
Adjust Accordingly
If you find misalignment, don’t be afraid to take action. Start by making minor adjustments or planning larger changes down the road. Realigning your work with your long-term goals can be a huge motivator in making hard work feel more rewarding.
Step 5: Associate Work with Pleasure
To make work feel easier and less overwhelming, it’s essential to associate it with positive emotions. When you find ways to enjoy the process, tasks that once felt like burdens can become more engaging and rewarding. This shift in perspective allows you to focus on the value you’re creating, the progress you're making, or the skills you're honing, rather than on the difficulty of the task itself. Whether it’s through breaking down larger projects into smaller, more manageable steps or celebrating small wins along the way, finding joy in each step can significantly reduce the stress often tied to work.
Additionally, when you connect your work with positive emotions, it creates a ripple effect, building momentum and motivation over time. You’re more likely to approach tasks with enthusiasm, and that sense of enjoyment can even lead to increased productivity. When tasks no longer feel like obligations but instead become opportunities for growth or fulfillment, your entire relationship with work can transform. Instead of dreading responsibilities, you begin to seek them out, leading to a more sustainable and fulfilling work experience.
Personally, I have no idea where the notion that work needs to be unpleasant came from. It absolutely doesn’t. I’ve worked tons of jobs I hated in the past. I’ve been a dishwasher, worked at a gas station for minimum wage, worked in retail, and worked outright boring jobs. However, I always found a way to make the work pleasurable and productive. My usual strategy—music. In essentially every job I worked, I’d listen to music I liked. It helped me bond with my coworkers and it helped me maintain a sense of happiness and optimism throughout the day.
Find ways to make work engaging and interesting if the tasks themselves are less than ideal. Over time, you’ll condition yourself to enjoy work. Now, I’m not saying that every aspect of your job will be pleasurable overnight. However, attributing pleasurable activities to your work can make a job more appealing.
Celebrate Small Wins
Don’t wait to accomplish massive achievements to celebrate. Recognizing and rewarding small wins along the way can make the journey more enjoyable. Whether it's finishing a report ahead of time or receiving positive feedback from a colleague, celebrate each step forward as a sign of progress. When I was in college, I wouldn’t play video games during weekdays. This would force me to work on my business, College Conqueror, and my personal/academic goals. If I stuck to my planner and gave a high level of output on my work, I’d reward myself by playing video games on a Friday afternoon and during the weekends.
It may sound like a meager reward but it worked wonders. Depriving yourself of things you enjoy and rewarding yourself with that item or activity is a great way to essentially trick your brain into winning more. This is how it works: When you engage in an activity you enjoy like playing video games, your brain releases dopamine which causes you to feel great. Dopamine, like many chemicals, can be adapted to. Personally, this is why I think people get addicted to drugs.
Sure, there are addictive chemicals but at its core, the drug releases dopamine into the brain. And as the user takes the drug consistently, the amount of dopamine released decreases due to the user building up a tolerance. So, in order to get what the user would consider a typical high, he or she needs to increase the dosage of the drug or take different, more potent drugs.
The same is true for you and your rewards. They are a type of drug—designed to release dopamine on command. However, if you deprive yourself of the drug for a long period of time, getting that hit feels far greater. On top of that, you stay in that sweet spot of never overdosing or taking your drug usage to the extreme. Plus, treating yourself only after doing necessary activities guarantees you’re always positively performing. If you perform poorly, you don’t get your drug. Perform exceptionally, you get your drug.
I bet you’ll want to perform exceptionally more frequently if this is the case, right?
Redefine What Work Means to You
I once had a conversation with a friend. I explained to him that I was working later on that day on a landing page for a marketing agency I was running at the time and I was excited to see the results of my work. For me, designing landing pages or websites is a very creative endeavor. It’s not too much different than drawing a cartoon or listening to music in my mind.
He responded to me by explaining, "You’re not supposed to like your work. That’s why it’s work". That doesn’t make sense, I thought. Why can’t I like work? I thought deeply about this idea. Could you enjoy work? Is it meant to be unpleasant? Eventually, I discovered that the answer is no. Although, I’d noticed that most people didn’t understand this.
To me, work is simply an activity you do to progress toward a goal. That’s it. When you’re at an office job doing data entry, you’re doing an activity (Data Entry) to make progress toward a goal--A paycheck and the internal goals of the company. When you’re designing websites for clients, you’re doing an activity (Designing Websites) to make progress toward a goal--Money and a satisfied client. When you’re playing video games like Call of Duty, you’re doing an activity (Playing a game) to make progress toward a goal--Ranking higher/improving your skills/leisure/etc.
Work is simply the progression of an activity that leads to a desired outcome. But wait, isn’t this essentially every thoughtful activity? Exactly! Everything is work already. But there are certainly forms of work you like, right? So, work doesn’t need to be unpleasant. The 7-year-old playing on his Xbox for 12 hours a day is working. Is the purpose of his goal to make money? Probably not. Would it be considered a worthy effort for a long-term career? Maybe not, although nowadays, E-Sports is pretty big from what I understand. But what he’s doing is no different than Da Vinci spending hours painting for pleasure or perhaps J.K. Rowling brainstorming various ideas for her wizarding world. It’s all work. It’s your perception of the work that hinders you. Shift your thinking. Once you know what you’re working for and what the end result means to you, work becomes a lot more enjoyable. Adopting a positive mindset can significantly change how you experience work. Instead of viewing challenges as obstacles, see them as opportunities for growth. When you embrace this mindset, you’ll find even the hardest tasks easier to manage.
Step 6: Focus on Small Wins
Focusing on small wins throughout your workday helps build momentum by providing a steady stream of positive reinforcement. Each time you complete a task, no matter how small, you experience a sense of accomplishment that fuels your motivation to tackle the next challenge. This approach keeps you engaged and helps prevent feelings of overwhelm, as you're breaking larger projects into manageable pieces.
Celebrating small victories can also shift your mindset from focusing on how much more there is to do, to appreciating the progress you're making. Over time, these small wins compound, creating a cycle of success that not only drives you forward but also reinforces the belief that you’re capable of achieving your goals.
Define What Constitutes a Win
It's important to understand what qualifies as a "win." This could be something as simple as completing a challenging task or achieving a personal milestone. By setting clear and attainable mini-goals, you’ll find yourself feeling accomplished regularly, which fuels your motivation.
Try to make your wins big enough that they matter and impact you significantly but small enough that there aren’t 1000 steps required for your win to be achieved. Years ago, I took the advice of every productivity and business guru. Most of them gave terrible advice. But I didn’t know it at the time. Having a super long morning routine was what every influencer and leader would teach. I listened and had a morning routine so long, it lasted from 6 am until 11:30 am.
However, because the routine was so long and had so many steps, it was easy to ruin it. Wake up a little later than normal and the routine falls apart. Unable to grab a cup of coffee or stay focused enough to meditate long enough and the routine falls apart.
My idea of a win was tied too closely to these long-winded routines and constantly failing because I had to skip a step or take longer than average began to hurt my self-esteem. Losing made me feel like a loser. But, I eventually tried something new. I realized that I could control what a win meant to me. So, what I began to do is create single-tasked micro wins. If I pulled off a micro-win, I’d consider the day a success. Once I applied this thinking, everything shifted.
My current micro wins have been consistent over the past 4 years.
Wake up early (anytime from 5:30am-6:30am is acceptable)
Dedicate myself to exercising at least 3 days a week for at least 20 minutes
Work on one major activity that I believe will help progress the business or improve my life
If I could do these 3 things, I’d consider the day a win. And I’d consider it a win the moment I did any of these things. With this in mind, by simply waking up, I was starting my days with a win. This is a life hack in itself. Because the beautiful part about winning is that once you begin to win, you don’t want to stop. You do whatever you can to keep the momentum going. This means that if waking up is a win, then you just win every day by default. Out of curiosity, would you like to just wake up and win every day? I know I would. And, because I began to create small wins for myself, I do.
Avoid Perfectionism
Instead of striving for perfection, focus on consistent progress. Studies show that perfectionism often leads to procrastination and burnout.
It's more productive to focus on consistent progress, as it keeps you moving forward without the pressure of unattainable standards. Studies have shown that perfectionism often leads to procrastination because the fear of not doing something perfectly can make it difficult to even start.
Over time, this mindset leads to burnout, as perfectionists tend to overwork themselves trying to meet unrealistic goals, leaving little room for rest or self-compassion. By shifting your focus to steady, incremental progress, you’ll maintain your momentum, experience less stress, and see more meaningful long-term results. The key is embracing imperfections and learning from them, which allows you to keep growing and improving without sacrificing your well-being.
Step 7: Create a Positive Feedback Loop
A positive feedback loop is a powerful tool for boosting motivation and productivity. When you consistently acknowledge and reward progress, no matter how small, you create a cycle of reinforcement that encourages continued effort. This loop operates by linking progress to positive emotions, helping you associate work with feelings of accomplishment. Each win, whether it’s completing a small task or achieving a larger goal, serves as a motivator to keep going. Over time, these incremental victories build confidence, showing that progress is possible and reinforcing the belief that effort leads to success.
Moreover, a positive feedback loop helps sustain long-term motivation by reducing feelings of overwhelm. Instead of focusing solely on distant, large-scale outcomes, you begin to see the value in each step you take toward your goals. Celebrating these small achievements gives you a sense of control and accomplishment, which fuels further productivity.
The more you recognize your efforts, the easier it becomes to stay focused and engaged in your work.
Remember, don’t allow the idea of work to keep you from making progress. I truly believe that we, as humans, have been conditioned to see work as a negative, boring chore that we must do. However, if you follow the suggestions I provided, I’m sure you’ll find your capacity to work longer and harder while making your projects and tasks more enjoyable will improve dramatically.
Leviticus Rich is the top productivity expert and productivity coach located in the DC Metro area within Northern VA.
Leviticus has helped thousands of people improve their time management, focus, and productivity by offering some of the best, science-backed advice and techniques in the modern era.
P.S. If you need help managing your productivity and destroying procrastination, click the link here to sign up for free productivity coaching.
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