👣 Step 58: Invisible Labor

I'm a music lover. Always have been, always will be. One music award that's always stuck out in a weird way to me is the Grammy's "Best New Artist" award.

Because those artists aren't new.

They've been making music for years. They just became popular enough in the past 1-2 years for us to collectively view them as "new."

But that's wrong, and it disregards a lot of their foundational, behind the scenes work that got them to that place.

It disregards their invisible labor. The work you don't see.

As the Hollywood joke goes: "It takes twenty years to become an overnight success."

Ruben Henderson and I were talking about this at the705's 20 Under 40 social, because success comes with a lot of invisible labor.

A lot of time, energy, and attention that no one will ever know. A lot of skill that makes things look hard to others but easy to the person doing them.

So, here are the two things I want to note about Invisible Labor:

1. It is necessary. You can't remove invisible labor - it is part of the pursuit. To achieve your goals, it will take a lot of work that you don't even realize yet. Be prepared for that. You will have to put in a lot of work to get where you want to go, but it's worth it.

And labor doesn't always mean painful or hard. It just means work. Effort.

You can make work fun, and I highly encourage you to do so! I have a ton of fun doing all the things I do. But regardless, it is still work.

By definition, to be extraordinary, you have to be extra ordinary. Unlike the regular, typical, or average.

And if ordinary results require ordinary effort, then what do extra ordinary results require?

2. It doesn't have to be invisible. I think back to my Growth Formula and that Growth = (Visibility x Value x Volume) +/- Luck. Visibility is very, very important variable. And something you can change.

You can make your effort more visible others so that they see the journey and behind-the-scenes.

No, you don't need to (and probably shouldn't) highlight every event you go to, thing you do, or person you meet. There's a middle ground between highlighting everything and highlighting nothing.

But you can talk about more. You can let others know more about the important, valuable things you're doing. Again, think back to the Growth Formula. If you're doing something that has high Value, but no one else is seeing it, make it Visible.

Invisible Labor is foundational to success. So lean in.

Know that your dreams will take a lot of work, but they're worth chasing.

And if you can make that work visible and bring people along for the ride, why not?

Experts are made in practice, not performance.

See you next Thursday, Steppers.

We will succeed,

Grayson

​graysonstepanek.com​

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Song of the Week:

Robot Killed The Working Man Zach Bryan PREVIEW   ​

Interesting how this was going to be my song before I chose this topic. Zach's back with another great project, and this song immediately became a favorite. He talks about factory automation destroying jobs for farmers and workers in the Midwest, but it's an eerie parallel to AI and broader automation across all industries. A perfectly timed and necessary story to warn us against incorporating AI at the expense of human purpose and flourishment.