Hard Work and Rewards

We all love rewards, no doubt. But many of us loathe hard work. However, both concepts are more related to each other than we think.
First, I’ll define hard work in my opinion. Hard work is not just limited to physical exertion while doing certain heavy-duty tasks. It is any form of work, be it physical, mental, emotional, intellectual or spiritual, that one puts their heart and soul to start, work on, and finish.
Rewards in this context, then, are the fruits of our labour, as the saying goes, ‘we reap what we sow’. Rewards can also come in many forms, not just in the forms of physical gifts or money, but also intangible yet real qualities such as trust, love, loyalty, peace, joy, sense of fulfilment, feeling good, and others. And from here, it can be deduced that the harder you work, the more fulfilling the reward that you receive. Or is it?
Maybe it was, in good-old times where people were simpler, where most commoners were farmers, toiling away at the fields to feed their families. But now, with new technology introduced frequently at a frantic pace, do people still need to work hard to receive rewards?
If working hard is just about how much of time and effort put into a project, then I think that there are many ways where technology can help us save much time and effort to yield the same results, for example the computer and the Internet are tools that can help us finish our assignments and tasks in a fraction of the time taken if those tasks were to be done by-hand or manually, for example writing an essay, finishing a book or business report, et cetera.
However, working hard is also a mentality. Using my book report example earlier, if two people were required to complete the same book report, and one of them actually went and searched extensively on research materials, citing sources and linking the main ideas in their groups, while the other person just copies and pastes material from a finished book report of the same title that was available, and both passed it up on time and got good grades. My question: Who worked hard? Even though both of them may have used the same amount of time to finish up, the one who worked hard is undoubtedly the first student, because he actually started the book report from scratch. So, when an impromptu quiz is given on the report, the first student actually understands what he read, because he did the research, whereas the second student just copied someone else’s research and claimed it as his own.
It’s disappointing, sometimes, that plagiarism goes undetected and sometimes even encouraged, when teachers, lecturers and bosses allow or don’t take serious action towards those who commit it in ways big or small ways. This fact can be proven by the fact that many sample essay and thesis sites on the Internet receive huge amounts of hits daily, and contract essay writers run a pretty busy business indeed. I won’t go into too much detail on this one, so here’s an article that provides a detailed account on contract essay writing for your knowledge. (And no, even though this career does provide lucrative income, personally I’m not going to encourage people to cheat by writing papers for people and then putting their name there, as if it is their work. Besides, my writings are ‘copyrighted’, because they are my style, my flair. Go find your own!)
Undeniably there will be always people who try to slack, cheat, bribe, cut corners and use other similar means to get more work done faster, cheaper and without much personal cost to themselves, and often they do get away with it. However, these people do miss out on one very important reward that comes with integrity and true effort on their part: the reward of pure satisfaction. People who truly work hard always feel satisfied at the end of their task after putting forth their best effort. A student who invested 110% of her effort in her studies and excelled tends to feel more exhilarated by her success, because she knew and recalled her effort that compared to, say, a student that also excelled with similar achievements but just sailed through with 80% of her effort. That’s why it is said that the labourer’s sleep is the sweetest. When one is truly worn out due to the fact that they did their very best, the joy that ensues is great.
As for the author herself on these topics? I’m glad when I recalled the joy of finishing my secondary school folios by myself, even though there was the temptation to copy them from some Scribd document to save time, and I’m glad that I stood by my principles. However, I still need to word hard on putting forth my best effort, because I admit that when it comes to many things, I didn’t at least give a 100% effort. Just this week, I saw the position list in class (our list is combined for both form 6 classes) and I got 2nd, after half a year of sitting at the top position in the form. (no showing off intended). At the same time where I congratulate my friend who managed to get first place, I’m also glad that I got ‘dethroned’ in a sense because now I am reminded not to sit on my laurels (!) and strive to get my aim, which is (hopefully) a 4.0 CGPA and a band 6 in MUET. Perfect scores I know, but I want to give 110% into achieving it. Coming to think of it, if I was always ‘up there’ then I would have easily become complacent and lazy…
I hope that today’s post can inspire all of us, me and you, to always work hard, because the rewards are the most satisfactory.