C's Get Degrees Do Just Enough

Image Credit | Anna Shvets | Pexels

 OK.  Let's put on our tinfoil hats to block out the mind control rays.  We are going to talk about a conspiracy theory.  The theory is around college and work in general and how much effort is really required. 

Who Has Made it Work?

In fact, I think college is a scam for the most part. There are examples on top of examples of people that did not graduate college that were successful in life anyway.

• Ted Turner of Turner Broadcasting
• Bill Gates of Microsoft
• Steve Jobs of Apple
• Larry Ellison of Oracle
• Michael Dell of Dell
• Paul Allen of Microsoft
• John D Rockefeller of Standard Oil
• Dave Thomas of Wendys

That is obviously not a comprehensive list, but it is an interesting list of some of the most successful people in the history of business, who despite not graduating college was still successful.  How is that possible? Traditional wisdom says that you must to school and get straight A's to be successful in life. You have to ignore going to parties and buckle down and study every night or you won't make it. Teachers celebrate A's and B's and your parents worry about C's on your report card. But should they?

Why Does it Work?

Robert Kiyosaki, who wrote Rich Dad Poor Dad, was quoted as having said "A students work for the C students and the B students work for the government." His quote means that those students who go to school for 4 years, buckle down, study hard and pass with great grades can get jobs working for the C students who didn't put n nearly the effort. Why is that? The A students proved that they were good at going to school and learning the material, not that they were good at doing the job. Remember that the professors teaching you in college are largely there as just professors without truly successful real-world experience. If they had that kind of ability, they would be out in the real world making great things happen. 

The students who graduated with C's and ended up in the management position at your company realized something completely different. They realized that a C does in fact earn you a degree.  A D gets you on academic probation and an F washes you out. A-C however gets you a degree. That degree doesn't have an asterisk next to it, or some other mark to indicate your performance in college was just so so, it is the same degree that the valedictorian gets. Once you have that degree and you go to apply for jobs, almost none of them ask you what your GPA is. They really care more about if you have experience than the degree. In fact, some big companies like Google are no longer asking you to have a degree if you have relevant experience. They're not the only company that feels that way.

So the C students had a strategy that worked for them. They looked into the future and realized that they could go to that party and as long as they got a C in the class they still got to pass. The C still earned them the degree. The C still got them a foot in the door, because nobody knows what their GPA was and nobody really cares. They got to work and had a habit of identifying what the minimum amount of effort required was, to get the result they want. For example, if you interviewed for your dream job and stumbled through the questions and felt like you did a poor job, would you be disappointed to then be offered the job? No, you'd be over the moon. You'd look bad and say, well I guess I did enough to impress them. You did the right amount to get the result you want.

What Risks Exist of Overachieving?

There's another saying in the world of sales, "Once you've closed the sale quit talking." There's a good article at Entrepreneur.com that talks about why that saying is true. They talk about how once you've done enough to close the sale, you should stop talking and stop trying to close the sale. You've already achieved the outcome you desired and at this point, the only thing that can happen from continuing to drive the sale is to actually unsell the customer. You're better off taking the win and moving on. 

That, of course, isn't the only potential negative of constantly pushing yourself harder and harder to achieve more. In fact, sometimes you can achieve more by doing less. What does that mean? There is a point, where doing more and more to perfect something actually starts to reduce your effectiveness. If you work 20 hours a day and sleep 4, you're going to find yourself exhausted both physically and mentally. At some point that catches up with you and your performance starts to degrade. Sure you are putting in a ton of hours, but you're not producing any more work. In reality, you may be producing poorer quality work, because it might be full of mistakes brought on by exhaustion. Rather learn to balance work and life so that you can both achieve your dreams for work and life. 

In Conclusion

I've always wanted to use that phrase in an article. In school, I was taught over and over not to use the phrase "In conclusion" to wrap up an article. The truth is that everyone knows what that means and that phrase does in enough to get the point across that we're talking about what all this means. So what does it mean?

The reality here is that if you can easily achieve A's and B's in school and get the top performance at work, go right ahead and do it. The deeper lesson here is that it's important to understand that there is a point at which you can continue to work without getting any additional benefit. There is a point where you're studying harder and harder, working later and later, and the end result will be exactly the same. You need to learn to identify when you've done enough to get the job done and stop. At this point, if you want to work harder and later, go ahead but do it on a different project. Achieve more by doing less. 

Have you ever succeeded by doing just enough? Have you been able to achieve great things without working yourself to death every day? I want to hear YOUR stories. Tell me by posting below or contacting me!