If you want to get into homebrewing your own beer, know this: 80% of the time spent is cleaning. People fall in love with the idea of designing a recipe, throwing in the ingredients, stirring the pot, watching the airlock bubble in the fermentation tank. And that is all fun. But to make a drinkable beer, sanitation is essential at every step of the process, and it’s far from fun.
But most work worth doing is a bit like this. There’s the glamorous bits we idolize. And then the rest of it. The tasks we forget about, but actually account for the majority of the time spent. For a consultant it’s the administrative tasks and legal work. For a marketing leader it’s the meetings and coordination emails.
When you’re daydreaming about another career or opportunity, you’re probably focusing in on the 20% of the work that’s visible and fun. But just to make a fair comparison, don’t forget about the other 80%.