There is a big difference between ‘working hard‘, and ‘working as hard as you possibly can.’
Each has its place, but it is necessary to understand them as different animals- in concept, feel, and result.
Until that difference is realized, embraced, and acted upon you will never be as strong, as fit, or be as skilled as you possibly can.
Referring back to a perfect articulation of a familiar concept:
“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom (advancement, ed.) and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.
This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle.
Power concedes nothing without a demand.
Fredrick Douglass
It never did and it never will.”