Frank Ocean said work hard in silence, let success make the noise. It couldn’t be more true. The more you talk about your goals the less likely you are to achieve them. Work hard in silence and let your work do the speaking. All of the pressure will be off you so that you can focus on doing what’s best.
Publicly announcing your goals make you less likely to achieve them. When you talk about your goals, it already gives you that dopamine. It already makes you feel like you achieved the goal even when you didn’t. Even if you already feel like you made it, remain silent about your goals and intent.
The more publicly you announce your next move and what you’re going to do, the less likely you’re going to even start on them. You just added unnecessary extra pressure that you didn’t have to add to yourself. Now, people are going to expect for you to do something.
If you don’t, then well, you were just a hypocrite who is all talk and no action. So then if you actually do follow through with what you were going to do, it doesn’t feel like it’s your choice anymore. It feels like someone else made the choice for you.
There isn’t a whole lot of good to be had from talking about your goals. There’s a reason why so many people refuse to say whether they’re going to run for the President of the United States. Saying so would have almost locked them into the choice when they’re not ready yet.
The possible candidates mostly just work hard in silence and let success make the noise.
What Does Work Hard in Silence, Let Success Make the Noise Mean?
Work hard in silence, let success make the noise means that you don’t care about how others see you. You don’t care about touting or even announcing your successes and wins to the world because your success speaks for itself. You’re too busy trying to make things happen that you don’t need to market anything.
In a chess game, the only times you actually speak up is when you’re getting ready to say checkmate. You wait until you’ve made all of your moves and your opponents made all of the moves. Then when everything is about to be over do you finally say something that’ll disrupt the flow of the game.
Work hard in silence and let success make the noise. Every time that I announced my goals to the world, I didn’t achieve them. Because there was always something in the back of my mind telling me that if I don’t follow through, I would disappoint the ones who I told.
Even if they don’t give my goals a minute’s thought and actually forgot about them. There’s always something lingering in the back of my mind that says that I can’t let them down. That I can’t fail them. It’s unnecessary pressure that you’re putting on yourself.
There are people who thrive on the public accountability. However, if you’re not one of those people, then it’s time to ignore the ones who thrive on that environment and work on how you want to work on. Marketing your successes takes away your time from your core competency.
How do You Work in Silence and Let Success Make the Noise?
The first way to work in silence and let success make the noise is to simply stop caring about how you look to others. Whether others see you as a failure or whether others see you as a success, you simply don’t care. All you care about is bettering yourself and focusing on yourself to move up on the world.
You simply ignore the marketing aspect that comes with success. Unless your brand depends on you convincing everyone that you’re successful. Then marketing matters a lot. However, if that’s not the case, then you put your head down and focus on what you can control and work on that.
There’s no need to say that you’re going to be a millionaire every month to others. Just become a millionaire like it’s no big deal and live your life afterwards. Even if others don’t notice you’re that successful, it doesn’t matter. Remember that this millionaire janitor died with $8 million.
No one knew how rich he was. In fact, people would give him free things because they thought he was so poor. Work in silence and let success make the noise. Never announce your next moves because your mouth is what can destroy all of the progress you’ve built and made.
Loose lips sink ships. Continue to keep doing what you’re doing for 10 years. Then one day, you’ll wake up and realize you’ve made it. Then, and only then, can you think about touting your success and teaching others on what to do or how you got there.
Why You Should Work in Silence and Let Success Make the Noise
Below are the reasons why you should work in silence and let success make the noise.
1) You Only Worry About Yourself
it’s stressful and time consuming to worry about others thoughts and their possible actions. On top of worrying about yourself. Once you let the whole world know what your next moves are, then it comes to a point where you have to mange their expectations as well.
That’s a lot of work. It’s not that it’s a lot of work, it’s a lot of unnecessary work. Work hard in silence and let success make the noise. Put your head down and worry about what your next moves are. Don’t worry about what others are going to think, possible responses to when they bring up something, and the like.
Life is already hectic, stressful, and complicated enough. There’s no reason to make it even more complicated by adding more people into the mix. It’s quite liberating when all you worry and care about is reaching your goals. There’s less distractions and less chances of error.
2) Others Won’t Try to Put You Down
Jealousy is real. When others think that you’re rich, then they try to think about how to exploit that for their own gain. If others think that you’re poor, they mostly leave you alone. There’s no unnecessary and unwanted attention coming your way if you just keep to yourself.
Work hard in silence and let success make the noise. You don’t want others to think how great you’re doing because deep down inside, others want to be better than you. Your true friends don’t want to be better than you. However, strangers want to be better off than you.
It’s just too complicated to make others think you’re doing great. Many people make their brands by convincing others that they’re doing better than they’re actually doing. However, those people are all talk with no action and substance to back up their words.
You don’t want to be an empty hollow person. You actually want results and the accolades to back up your claims. That’s how you build trust and instill confidence in others that you’re the right person to follow.
3) Managing Expectations and Pressure
Whenever I get a tweet that gets 5,000+ likes (like this one), I feel an undue amount of pressure. What tweet should I put out next? Do others expect me to perform at the same rate? The high expectations are what destroys brands and not the low expectations. If you’re expected to fail and you fail, then great!
If you succeed, then you surprised on the upside. That’s why the under promise over deliver strategy works so well. Surprising on the upside and managing expectations will do more for your career and success than anything else. The best strategy is to over promise and over deliver.
However, that strategy is so hard that only the very select few can pull it off. Google is one example. That’s why the better strategy is to work hard in silence and let success make the noise. You don’t need to prove yourself to anyone else. All you have to do is see whether you can pull it off for yourself.
4) Failures Affect You Less
If others expected you to be a failure, then when you fail, you’re not hurt. It doesn’t spiral you out of control. Your emotions are still well intact and well in check. Failures don’t affect you as much because that’s what everyone, including yourself, expected as well.
You were so private that people thought that you were just ashamed to say what you were up to. You really didn’t have anything in the works to tout how great your life is. That’s why you should work hard in silence and let success make the noise. Failing becomes normal at that point.
Many college graduates are shocked when they find out they don’t make six figures straight out of college. Their high expectations made them feel unhappy about their $70,000 job offer. Even though $70,000 is a lot of money to make as a 22/23 year old. Expectations drive happiness more than you know.
5) We Are our Own Worst Critic
Whether you like it or not, you are your own worst critic. This doesn’t mean that you are harsher than the rest of the world. This means that you are the worst at accurately assessing how you’re actually doing. When you do well, you criticize that you could’ve done better.
When you do bad, you criticize that you should’ve done better than you did. There’s just no winning. That’s why you don’t try to assess how you’re doing, success wise. You just put your head down and continue working. Work hard in silence and let success make the noise.
Lack of emotional control is what destroys most people’s successes. The highs of success and the lows of success affect more people in ways that they didn’t see coming. It’s all about remaining calm and remaining logical, even throughout storms. Be a machine when it comes to success.
6) Success Takes a Long Time
The truly successful people I know attempted their craft for a very long time. At a minimum, five years. Then years 8 is when they’re starting to reap the rewards and then year 10 is when they grow to new heights people could only imagine. Throughout that time, there’s going to be many tests that you need to pass in order to get there.
One of the ways to avoid those annoying tests is to just focus on building yourself and not trying so hard to market it to the world. That’s why you should work hard in silence and let success make the noise. Too many people are short term thinkers and think that one win will set them up for life.
That’s not how it works. Don’t think about the short term. Think about the long term. The more you market your successes in years 2 and 3, the more chances that you have to fail going forward. That just shouldn’t be how it works. Don’t make things harder than it has to be. It’s not advantageous.
Work Hard in Silence, Let Success Make the Noise
Now that you’re completely convinced that you should work hard in silence and let success make the noise, it’s time to actually implement it in action. If you’re finding out that you can’t implement this principle, then it’s time to figure out why. For me, personally, I can’t when my physiological needs aren’t taken are of.
I have to sleep well. I have to eat well and feel well in order to not feel the need to tell others what I’m doing. Once that is taken care of, I have no problem keeping everything to myself. I have no problem working hard in silence and letting success make the noise.
Once I stopped telling others about my next move, my actual next moves became a lot clearer. There’s less hesitancy now. The quality of my choices skyrocketed and my overall happiness level skyrocketed because there’s less undue pressure for me to perform.
There’s a lot of liberation you feel by just letting things be. You’re not put in a box that others expect you to be in. There’s more flexibility for you to change your mind if you want to. You want to avoid getting pigeon holed into somewhere you don’t want to be long term. Remain nimble.
Work hard in silence and let success make the noise. You’ll be surprised at just how much your productivity improves afterwards. There’s no one else to think about but yourself. No one else depends on you. You only depend on yourself. How amazing is that? There is absolutely no pressure.
Working hard in silence also reinforces humility. It’s best to let your success speak for itself instead of telling everybody about it, which comes across as bragging. Nobody likes somebody who brags, right? Great article!
Absolutely. There’s no need to bring everyone into the conversation. You are good enough just on your own!