I wonder why it is that some of us succeed at the same challenges where others fail. I do not find lack of talent to be the root cause. Several talented people fail when people with average IQ succeed. I tend to agree with the commonly quoted explanation that hard work, put in a disciplined manner and the right direction, is the determining ingredient for success.
This is standard advice and common knowledge, and yet we rarely apply it in life. So I feel like digging a little deeper. Why do people work hard towards certain goals and not others? Why does someone enjoy exercising hard, and another avoids it, despite needing it badly? Why does the latter not mind working hard on some other goals? Clearly, the ability or will to put in hard work does not seem to be an innate characteristic of an individual - everyone seems to possess it and use it at times. In fact, the same person often has different choices about putting in or avoiding effort for the same issue in different conditions.
That leads me to wonder - Is hard work simply an input? Should we consider it our credit (or guilt) if we choose to put in serious effort on an issue? I think it is not as simplistic as that. I think the choice of making effort is an output, not an input.
It seems to me that we choose to put in effort under influence of a variety of factors. These may include:
- Desperation (for survival) - e.g. the routine exercise done by patients of diabetes
- Prospect (of pleasure) - e.g. muscles built to impress a girlfriend
- Fun (of making the effort) - e.g. working out daily just to feel good about oneself
The first (desperation) seems to be the strongest motivation, effective on almost every kind of individual, yet it works only for short spurts of hard effort. Work driven by desperation causes exhaustion quickly, and should we not succeed before we get exhausted, we may even choose to quit.
The second (prospect-driven) seems the weakest, across the board. Sure, we all feel like putting in some extra effort to improve our lifestyle or treat ourselves with something we covet or just add numbers to our bank account, yet this feeling is weak, and we do not mind compromising the effort every so often. Our entropy, our natural inclination to relax or get disoriented, inhibits this effort very easily.
The third is what seems to drive people who put in sustained effort. Most people I look at as successful in various aspects of life have put in effort because they enjoyed the effort itself. They did not just work out of love for the goal - they worked because the work itself was fun. Steve Jobs liked making good gadgets. Warren Buffet likes to apply his brain to analyze and make smart choices. Arvind Kejriwal likes trying to remove corruption. They are not being martyrs by sacrificing watching movies and afternoon naps for their career - any day they will choose their career over these supposed luxuries, for it is more fun.
These "successful" people may not be successful at all aspects of life. Quite like the rest of us. Yet, they are different because for some reason, they could identify the area of effort that their mind resonated with. I think we need to introspect a little to find out what work inspires us to deliver excellence, inspires a thirst in us to learn and progress. We will be successful, every single day, if we identify that area of work and choose that as our career, because that will ensure that we work hard and that therefore we succeed at it.
