What My Dad Taught Me About Hard Work Without Saying a Word

We’ve all met that person who works hard, but makes a big show of it. They want you to know how hard they’re working and to feel sorry for them. That’s not the kind of example of hard work my dad taught me, through his actions, to admire and emulate.

Watching my dad, over many years, scratch out a living on a 400-acre dairy farm in Western Pennsylvania, I’ve learned what it means to work hard with dignity and without complaint. There’s a quality about the way he works that lifts your spirits and makes you want to work harder yourself. It seems to me that this way of working is, in many ways, closely tied to long-term success in whatever field you’re in.

Today, I’ll share eleven essential lessons about hard work that my dad taught me without saying a word, and what I’ve done to apply this wisdom in my own life. I hope you’ll take away a few ideas for your own journey.

Hard work is more about consistency than intensity

Growing up on a farm, it was pretty clear to me that my dad didn’t love getting out of bed at 4am, or being outside near midnight, to milk our 125 cows, but they needed to be milked twice a day, every day of the year, and someone had to do it. One of the loudest examples of hard work he set for me was showing up to the barn day after day, without complaint, to do the work that needed done.

Some jobs will always be hard, and that’s ok

I remember watching my dad throw hay bales from the ground, up and onto the top of a wagon, and haul thousands of those bales from the fields into our barns. There may have been ways to make this job a little easier with more machinery, but not a whole lot. Some jobs will always be hard, and there’s no point in fighting that reality. Simply getting the work done is its own kind of pleasure and something to be proud of.

Work before play makes everything better

Seeing my dad work so hard as a kid made me want to help out whenever I could. This meant that during the summer, from a young age, I was working alongside him on the farm. The days were long and hot and sometimes I daydreamed about playing video games like a normal kid, but my dad’s example helped me to see there was a reward in this type of work. At the end of the day, when I finally sat down, that rest was the sweetest kind of rest— way better than if I had just been laying around all day.

The only way to failure is to keep moving forward

Trying new things and taking risks to expand production was a natural part of life on the farm. Sometimes I’d hear my dad talk with my mom about how things didn’t go as expected. In those situations, I never saw my dad lose hope, fall into a big funk, or become resentful of what hadn’t worked out. For him, the answer was always to just keep doing what needed done next and eventually a new path forward would emerge.

A cheerful attitude about your work makes the biggest difference

My dad has a natural charisma and his farmhands were always loyal to him. It wasn’t that he made their jobs any easier or paid them a ton of money— that was never really an option on the margins we were working with. The leadership lesson I learned from him, just by spending so much time together, was how far a cheerful attitude can go at encouraging others. There were plenty of jobs we had to do that weren’t fun, but my dad never approached these jobs with a negative, complaining spirit. He treated them like they were as much fun as anything else, and at least to me, it made it feel that way too.

It’s important to have pride in your work

I remember one time my dad taught me and my brothers how to clean out the cow stalls and lay down new bedding. I didn’t really think it was possible to do this job wrong, so I rushed through it and didn’t pay a whole lot of attention. When we came back the next day, it was obvious that we had made a mess of things and would have to do everything over. That image of my dad, showing us how to do it right, and explaining that we should take pride in our work has stuck with me to this day.

Hard work, even physical work, as a kind of dignity

The thing that has had the strongest influence on me, from my dad’s example, wasn’t anything he consciously taught me. It was simply watching him work on his farm day after day, to support our family, and realizing that he was doing this for us. He wasn’t seeking fame, career advancement, or wealth, he simply wanted to provide a good life for his wife and kids, and that knowledge, to me, has always been the best example of what hard work is good for.