Work on the right thing. Don't just work hard.

Today, I learned how easy it is to start working on the wrong thing.This morning, I was editing a landing page for a course I'm creating. It's a second iteration, and I was rewriting segments based on feedback I got last week. Pretty routine stuff.But, for some reason, I HATED doing it.I was just re-reading parts over and over – thinking about how to improve this or that. But there was no real vision of where to go or what I want to say.It was painful and unproductive.So I shut the laptop, picked up pen and paper, and started journaling:What the hell is wrong here?Something is different than last week when I made the first prototype. I was so excited to get into it, and now I couldn't make myself write another word.Where is this coming from?Then, after 20 or 30 minutes of writing about it, it hit me like a truck:I'm doing this to sell it, not because I want to make it.Somewhere in between the first and the second version, my motivation shifted from internal to external.Now, I realized I wouldn't be creating this product if it weren't for the money.This surprised me. Just one round of negative feedback, a tiny dose of fear of failure, and I pivoted my course to something I started optimizing for profit.Damn.So I scratched the new concept and returned to the original vision. I'm much more excited to work on that because it involves problems I would be working on even if there wasn't anyone to sell the solutions to.The outcome needs to come from who I am, not from what I want to get.The good news is, my mind seems to firmly resist working on the wrong thing for the wrong reasons, and I'm grateful for that.What scares me is how "easy" it would be to mistake these feelings for laziness or a lack of discipline and habitually push through them without stopping to think. It's my journaling habit that saved me today. (The link is a short article about how I use journaling.)So, I guess my learning is:Double-check you are working on the right thing. Don’t just work hard on whatever is in front of you. see hubwealthy.com/wealthy