The Lazy Construction Worker: A Cautionary Tale for the Rest of Us

　　A friend in the construction industry came over to talk to me late at night. He said that he was chatting with his colleagues during the day and found that the new graduates in the department were actually paid better than himself. Thinking about it, I have been in the company for almost 7 years, drawing pictures, raising capital, and going to construction sites. There is still a lot of work to do.
　　”It’s so frustrating. You think I’ve been here for so long, and I have toiled even if I didn’t get any credit. There’s really no point in doing this crappy job.” Seeing how indignant he was, I couldn’t help but suggest: “Since I’m so wronged, Why don’t you try another company?” He immediately stopped talking.
　　Many people may know that the more business trips you take in the construction industry, the greater your development opportunities will be. But my friend has never had any career ambitions. Every time the company arranged for him to go on a business trip, he felt it was too hard. He would either say that there was something wrong at home, or he would avoid the business trip on the excuse of feeling unwell. Every day, apart from sitting in front of the computer and mechanically drawing pictures, I don’t do any extra work. I go home from get off work at the end of the day. It is said that I have been working for 7 years, but in fact my ability has been spinning in circles, and my energy is obviously not as good as that of young people. Mixing in and out, he accidentally became the most cost-effective person in the workplace.
　　I read a very heart-wrenching quote on the Internet: “In this era, it’s not scary if artificial intelligence looks like humans. What’s scary is that people live more and more like artificial intelligence.” Have you noticed that there are many people like
　　my friend around us: He seems to work hard every day, never arriving late or leaving early, but promotion and salary increase are never his turn. Seeing the new young people running ahead of him, he felt the crisis. He complained about the past “hard work book” while thinking about a way out. However, they have only one year of service and no capital to change jobs, so they can only jump into the endless cycle of “complaining-continuing to mess around-complaining again” day after day.
　　Statistics show that apart from sleeping, people spend most of their time at work. Many people only think about getting through the 8 hours at work, but don’t think about how to make it more valuable. As the workplace celebrity He Jiayan said: “When you dawdle at work, you are actually wasting your time. Because you think your time is worthless, how can your salary be high?” Want to get rid of it
　　? In the current situation, they are too lazy to improve themselves, despise the work at hand and cannot be irreplaceable. It looks like I have 10 years of experience, but it’s just the same days repeated for 10 years. Every day you muddle along is the biggest waste of life. Remember the “Slow Horse Law” in psychology? One second the lazy horse looked down on the other hard-working horse and was complacent about his little cleverness. The next second, he was sent to the slaughterhouse by his owner.
　　There is a saying that is very true: “The rules of this world are like this. As long as your value is not as good as others, you will be ruthlessly eliminated.” In this era, elimination is commonplace. The time you waste in dawdling will slowly turn into an abyss trapping you, leaving you helplessly watching others move forward quickly but unable to do anything.
　　Time is the fairest thing in the world. If you choose to spend it, it will spend it on you. Every day that could have made you a better person, once wasted, will never come back. This ever-changing era will not wait for anyone to take a leisurely stroll. You can’t just do well for yourself, you have to do better than others. Do a little more today than yesterday, and be a little more proficient tomorrow than today. This is the greatest truth for ordinary people. Only when you have bowls and chopsticks with you can you always have food to eat.
　　Maybe you are slowly losing your passion in your work day after day, maybe you are having sleepless nights because your career path is getting narrower and narrower… But don’t forget, the real tiredness of life is not the tiredness of hard work. But the inner anxiety and confusion. The greatest pain in life is not the pain of working overtime, but the powerlessness and despair in facing life. When you really start working for yourself, all the difficulties will give way to you. The overtime classes you have taken, the projects you have done, and the skills you have learned will become your confidence, so that you will never talk down to anyone for the sake of life at any time.