If All You Have is a Hammer, Everything Looks Like a Nail

Or, my Eight of Pentacles quest to work smarter, not harder

Humans have a tendency to repeatedly reach for familiar tools and strategies, even when they aren’t the right ones for the job, and even when we’ve already been unsuccessful with them in the past.

Take me for instance. An impatient and almost problematically competent work horse, I think I can solve every puzzle and problem by working my ass off. I am so ready and eager to get to work that sometimes (I’ve gotten better!) I start working before I even know what I’m doing or where I’m headed.

And if things aren’t working, my first inclination - my first line of defense - is to work harder. Just work more! Magically fabricate more time in a finite day so that I can do even more of whatever it is I’m doing that is not working. Because more of the wrong action is surely better than less of it, right?

Why do we do this?

If you’re like me, it might be because “put in more effort” and “work harder” was the remedy Boomers spouted for everything. If you couldn’t crack calculus, you had to study more. If you were the last girl on the cheer squad who couldn’t do the splits, you had to stretch more. If you still couldn’t master the middle movement of Beethoven’s Fur Elise, you had to practice more.

As a result, any time I’m not reaching a goal I’ve set for myself, I just throw more work at it. And usually, it’s more of the same work.

As psychologist Abraham Maslow put it:

If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

And this particular hammer is what has led me to my current - and probably every other - bout of burnout.

When I rolled my eyes and snapped at my therapist that I simply did not have time for burnout, that it was finally summer break and I could finally turn my full-time attention to writing and my tarot business, she responded, “You’re barely hanging on by a thread. Do you honestly think that you will mentally and physically survive that strategy?”

She was right, of course. I needed to spend my summer the way God intended - actually taking a semblance of a break.

So, a few days ago, when I drew the Eight of Pentacles - the tarot card of keeping our heads down and working our little tails off, I just about chucked my tarot deck out the window.

The Eight of Pentacles shows a smith or artisan “hammering out” a bunch of work (figuratively and literally, at least in the Rider Waite Smith’s depiction of this Minor Arcana card, pictured above). Sitting far enough away from the signs of civilization we see in the background of the card, this tarot figure shows off their discipline and endurance, their ability to work long and hard on the task at hand. To get it done, and get it done well.

This tarot card may show up in a reading when we doubt our capabilities or find ourselves losing patience or hoping for some kind of short-cut to success. The Eight of Pentacles reminds us that, unfortunately, most of us can’t just slap a picture of something on a vision board and go to sleep until it shows up at our door. We have to work for it.

But what if you’ve been working for it, to the point of burnout even? What does this card have to say to us?

I realized that we may be selling the Eight of Pentacles short by labeling it a mere call for dogged effort and hard work. What if this card doesn’t always urge us to just “hammer it out”?

Is that all hammers symbolize, after all? Brute strength?

Thor’s hammer, Mjollnir, is arguably the most famous hammer in mythology. I mean, it has a name for crying out loud! Norse tales of Thor’s hammer often regale the mythical weapon’s heavy bludgeoning capability, its unmatched ability to pound to absolute dust any enemy who dares cross Thor’s path.

Taschen’s Book of Symbols, one of my latest used bookstore finds, describes Mjollnir like this:

Known as “crusher” and “murder-greedy,” Mjollnir, the great hammer of the Norse god Thor, was crucial in fighting both the giants and the world snake, the primal chaos that threatened the gods. Magically, it returned to its master when it was thrown.

I don’t know about you, but that last bit is what captivates me about Thor’s hammer. In fact, you can see this in action below.

I like to play the following clip from Marvel’s Thor: Ragnarok for my mythology students to introduce them to the Norse pantheon. It helps get them excited about ancient stories that are sometimes difficult to read, and for our purposes, it helps illustrate what I mean about Mjollnir’s magic.

For me, the most impressive characteristic of Mjollnir is not its big hunky bang-bang-you’re dead power, but rather its precision and clarity of direction. Mjollnir will fly through, across, over, and past any and every obstacle and make a deadly beeline straight for Thor’s waiting grip. It’s this characteristic of the hammer - this precision and laser-focus - that allows Thor to force his brother Loki’s hand in the above scene.

As the brilliant Taschen book points out, as tools, hammers obviously have the “capacity to pummel things into small bits,” but they also “became the tool that ‘hits the nail on the head,’ bringing things precisely into place, and evoking mythic artisans and builders of the cosmic order.”

Thought about in this way, the hammer in the Eight of Pentacles may not represent effort generally, but skilled and precise effort more specifically. The kind that brings cosmic order to our lives.

If we leave Scandinavia and travel east, we encounter another famous mythical hammer-wielder. In one version of the Chinese creation myth, Pangu (sometimes spelled P’an-ku as well as a few other ways), creator of the planet, is known for wielding hammer and chisel, just like our artisan in the Eight of Pentacles tarot card. When Pangu isn’t holding up the heavens with his bare arms so that sky separates from earth and allows for life, he painstakingly and lovingly carves out the various mountain ranges of our planet with his hammer and chisel.

Image credit: Mythopedia

Here too, the hammer is not merely a bang-bang-you’re-crushed weapon. Rather, it’s one that, when wielded effectively at correct angles and with appropriate levels of force, can create a natural masterpiece to be enjoyed by living beings for millions of years.

Again, with this more nuanced consideration of hammer as symbol, the Eight of Pentacles is not merely a call to “do the work,” but rather a strategic invitation to figure out exactly which work to do in order to get us to the success of the Nine and Ten of this tarot suit.

And that planning and strategizing phase before diving into the energy of the Eight of Pentacles more productively is where I’m at as we speak.

In the words of Meg Jones Wall in Finding the Fool,

After affirming that we’re going where we want to go, that we have clarified our goals and have the resources and support that we need to achieve them, we step back into action.”

Only after that step can we more confidently “devote ourselves to our cause” and “embrace the focused energy of the Eight of Pentacles,” says Wall.

To be honest with you, it’s making me pretty uncomfortable how much work I’m not doing right now! I’m being “slow” and not as “productive” as I am used to, and my impatient, achievement-oriented ass is freaking out a little!

But that’s precisely the point.

I want to - nay, need to - do only the tasks that will move the needle in the direction of my goals. I owe it to myself to start working smarter, not harder.

If we don’t define our work with clarity and precision, there will always be more of it to be done. That’s when rest, play, and quality time with loved ones get thrown out the window.

And that’s the cycle I’m trying to end.

If I want to have Mjollnir’s clarity of direction and Pangu’s precision work, I need to define and execute my work with just such clarity and precision.

I need to figure out which tasks actually matter and which are just me throwing spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks, or me still operating under some delusional childhood notion that my hard work - any hard work, even irrelevant hard work! - will be rewarded some day.

Because that’s not how the real world works.

We do not have infinite time or energy. And only the right work will get us where we need to go. The Eight of Pentacles asks us to slow down enough to be able to be more deliberate, strategic, and precise in our efforts so that they pay off wonderfully.

If you’ve been feeling burned out, spread too thin, or kind of flailing or disorganized with all the stuff you’re doing, I have a journaling exercise as well as a tarot spread that can help you embrace the focus and precision of the Eight of Pentacles.