Never worked hard in my life, advice please!!!
Bit of background: 23, graduated from tier 1.5 CS degree. I’ve never worked hard in my life, can’t recall a day from past 6-7 years where I’d spent over 6hrs in a day doing something productive.
I’ve been blessed with good problem solving and street smartness, cracked really good tier 1 companies without even prepping, got really interesting international achievements, got good communication skills. Most of exams etc I gave in my life, I scored high without prep. This is a lot of brag, yes, but now working at a corporate things are going downhill for me.
I’ve realised that hardwork beats talent every time, people around me are getting ahead by working and doing productive things, whereas I’m spending most of time scrolling reels and watching yt vids. My manager and other seniors have mentioned multiple times that I’m not performing well and need to work much harder. I have set up really high standards for myself but I’m doing nothing to achieve them, I try to setup new goals and doing things but I know, that has never worked for me in my life. I envy people who are able to work multiple hours in a sitting and do those things again, everyday. I’ve seen my dad working really hard as well, waking up at 4:30 for business, then working late till 12 for all my childhood. I really feel I’m going to be the failure, everyone has setup high standards for me, but I just can’t commit to anything.
I’m really in the lowest point of my life, need a bit of advice, thanks!!
In my context, I have never seen hard work win in corporate culture. Smart work>Hard Work. I have literally never worked for more than 2 hours in a day. Only 2-3 days come in a month where I go all in and that's it. Everyone in my team thinks that I am the most amazing coder in the team but reality is far from that. So, if you do have good problem solving, then that's an add on benefit. So, try to work smarter not harder.