Nothing will get done without someone rolling up their sleeves and making it happen.
Reading about ideas isn’t very difficult, although not nearly as many people read as they should.
Thinking about ideas is a little harder, as you have to give yourself time to think and permission to think of ideas that may fail on the first several iterations.
Actually working to complete an idea is the hardest. A lot of people read about ideas or talk about ideas, but never act on them. Taking action is the hardest of the three and usually requires the most effort.
But, while I agree that working hard will help take you far, what if you’re working towards the wrong thing?
If you don’t have the right strategy, your work ethic can only take you so far. You are only as good as your strategy.
For example, say you want to build a business. You can work really hard at building your website, making a logo, looking into forming an LLC, and interviewing an assistant, but if you haven’t come up with a strategy to find customers, you’re going to fail. In this scenario, you can easily put in 40, 60, or even 80 hours per week and not see any results that are helping to keep your startup in business.
Figure out what is important to you (what your goals are) and then come up with a relevant strategy to help support those goals. Otherwise all of your hard work will become a nightmare.