Hard Work? It's Not All It's Cracked up to Be. It May Even Be Irrelevant. Here's Why. Ever hear of how Neflix let go of many of its hardest-working employees in favor of those who most greatly impacted the company's bottom line?

From a young age, we're raised to believe that we can accomplish pretty much anything so long as we work hard enough to achieve it. And, for the most part, that makes sense, at least intuitively. If you study for three hours while your roommate studies for one, you'll probably do better on the test. If you spend 50 hours at work every week while your peer spends 30, you'll stand a better chance of getting a raise or a promotion.

This idea follows us at every stage of our lives, and it echoes a cornerstone belief of Western culture: As long as you work hard, you're going to be successful. But there's a problem with this philosophy: Hard work isn't always enough.

The Netflix approach

This idea is hard to accept at first, if you're a hard worker who invests major time and effort to get what you want in life. Perhaps then, it's best to introduce the alternative notion, using a corporate example.

Netflix (yes, the company responsible for those late-night television binges) has found success in part because it abolished the idea of hard work being the sole determining factor in an employee's progression within the company.

Netflix formally introduced this idea in a 2009 slide deck explaining the company's culture, but the idea dates back to 2001. Since her departure from Netflix, the company's former chief talent officer, Patty McCord, has been on podcasts and spoken in interviews about the rather different work ethic Neflix evolved.

After experiencing financial trouble in 2001, the company made a bold move to lay off a third of its employees -- not based on how long they'd worked there or how hard they'd worked, but solely on what they contribute, and how they impact the company's bottom line. This infuriated some long-time, hard-working employees, but those who remained ended up getting more done because they didn't have to correct others' mistakes, or work around unnecessary teammates.

Even after that initial layoff, Netflix paid almost no attention to employees' hard work. It allowed unlimited vacation time and flexible hours, focusing on results and innovation instead of the number of hours worked or the effort spent. This system resulted in the letting go of many employees who'd worked hard and performed well. But it also resulted in the better performance of the company (and, in many ways, in less stress for the remaining employees).

The problems with hard work

The Netflix example may seem harsh, especially if you've based your career around working hard. What if you too were fired after a decade of putting in long hours and genuinely trying your best?

Still, there are three main problems with hard work that an alternative culture or approach could correct:

"Hard work" doesn't equal "results." First off, hard work doesn't necessarily correlate with results. For example, it doesn't matter if you put 100 hours in to the design of your landing page; if your site doesn't convert,you may as well have spent one hour.

Hard work isn't efficient work. Next, consider that hard work isn't necessarily efficient work. If it takes the person next to you three hours to complete a task that you could have completed in an hour, that extra hard work may have actually cost the company unnecessary time and money.

Hard work doesn't encourage innovation. Finally, focusing on hard work doesn't encourage innovation or novelty. Instead, it encourages repetition and persistence. Those factors can be good, but you also need some drive to try new tactics, incorporate new ideas and learn new things in your life.

What to focus on Instead

None of this is meant to imply that hard work isn't valuable -- only that your hard work should be reserved for when it counts the most. So, as an individual (whether you're a professional or an entrepreneur), what should you be focusing on instead?

Efficiency. Focus on your efficiency. Instead of spending more hours, emphasize doing more with the hours you already have. For example, you could automate certain processes, delegate work beneath your paygrade or find new strategies to accomplish more within a set time frame. You can also work on eliminating redundancies in your workflow, or on abandoning tasks, meetings, and projects that eat up your time unnecessarily.

Results. Focus on results, prioritizing the work that seems to yield the highest return on your time investment. What's really going to help you succeed? Reduce or eliminate anything that doesn't fall in line with that vision, and don't be afraid to make cuts.

Improvement. Focus on improving yourself and your surroundings. Instead of working hard on level one, spend some effort trying to get to level two. Invest in yourself, learning new skills and gaining new experiences, and invest in your environment by training your employees and making sure you have the best tools available for the job.

Hard work is incredibly valuable, but we shouldn't keep thinking of it as the most important factor for success. Instead, we should see it as one of many factors that can help us, but won't, in itself, necessarily save our businesses.