Working extremely hard is much easier as compared to working with a mediocre effort. Sounds strange! Don’t believe me? You will by the end of the answer. I have learned most of the things in my life through experience. I have met all kinds of people and here is what I found: If you measure work/effort in units of 1–10 There are 3 levels of work: Mediocre effort/ work. Effort score: 5 Hard work. Effort score 7 Extreme. Effort score 10 Now these are obviously hypothetical values but they are just to give you an idea. I’ve met all three categories of people in my life, people who do mediocre amounts of work, people who work hard and people who are extreme. I have personally been in all those categories as well. Lets discuss these categories one-by-one. Mediocre effort: Majority of the people in our society fall into this class, there are a lot of people who work just to get by. These people are average at everything be it their studies, jobs or career. Strangely this is the class of people who suffer the most they put in 50% of the effort yet they are never paid/ rewarded as per their work. Hard work: This is the second majority of people in our society what we term as hard working people. They have an edge above the mediocre people just because they work 2 units more as compared to mediocre people. They are paid well, work at good positions in an organisations or own their business and they do decently alright. However their lives are nothing fancy, its just better than the mediocre ones. Extreme: These people are the real deal, they form less than 1% people in our society. They are usually obsessed with their work. They have a huge edge over the hard working people and they get rewarded exponentially for their effort. These people can go to any heights to achieve their goals and they will achieve it no matter what comes their way. You might think that these people might have high amounts of stress and are extremely unhappy, but no. In fact these people are actually the ones who have it easy, they have the least stress and are the most happy. Here is why: When someone puts in mediocre efforts he is bound to get mediocre results at best. When there is nothing extraordinary a person wishes to achieve he has a very less amount of motivation to work for it. Lets now say the person sets high goals for him selves and starts to work, he will be motivated to a certain extent and will break the mediocrity as well but soon he will hit a barrier. After working hard for long hours for about a week he will feel exhausted and would like giving up. And they do, they take a break, give it up and never exceed beyond that point. I call this point as the Golden Barrier. I call it golden because if one dares to cross this point the magic starts to happen and things change drastically. Extreme people cross the golden barrier and from there its all a cakewalk for them. The feeling of getting exhausted and getting burned out vanishes and new energy appears out of nowhere. People like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are the ones who operate at that level. After crossing the golden barrier you won't need any motivation/ inspiration to work, your emotions / setbacks won't hold you back from getting ahead. I hope this helps..