As I see it, there are really two kinds of work. There’s work by the hour and there’s work that is leveraged. Or to put it another way…
Supposing you wanted to fill a small lake. You could carry buckets of water all day. Or you could start digging a channel to your lake from the nearby stream.
Initially the carry buckets work would seem more satisfying. I mean, you’d see immediate results. Water sloshing everywhere. And the digging channel work would be, well, dry. Lots of dry dirt to move.
But the difference between these two types of work becomes immediately apparent as soon as you complete the channel. Water from the river rushes in, filling your lake. And here’s the thing: it wouldn’t matter if you carried buckets or not. Your lake would still be filled day and night by the river water.
So, to take the analogy to its natural conclusion. Work by the hour means money in your pocket, now. (Or at payday.) But when you stop working, so does the money. Leveraged work may take a while to show results. You may be making 25 cents an hour (if that) for quite some time. But once you create a stream of income, then whether you work or not, the income will flow.
So, when you’re working on something, one question to ask is: am I carrying buckets, or digging a channel?
