Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Hard Work
Six days shall you labor.
God
Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.
Abraham Lincoln
Man stands for long time with mouth open before roast duck flies in.
Chinese Saying
Any person who tells you that success and prosperity will fall into your lap if you only “believe” or “envision” or “confess” is a Mountebank—a seller of snake oil, a charlatan, a con. Industriousness has always been one of the keys to the doors to success, achievement and prosperity.
It never ceases to amaze me that people continually look for avenues of effortless success. Sadly, all you have to do is go to your local bookstore and you will find scores of books written by charlatans—both secular and religious—who are ready to tell their readers what they want to hear. “You too can be rich. Just believe these magical formulas and, Voila, wealth will come your way!” The only one who gets wealthy here, however, is the con writing the book.
This is Solomon’s take on effortlessness: A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come in like a bandit, and scarcity like an armed man. (Proverbs 6.10,11)
Faith in God, faith in the direction you are headed, and faith in your ability to realize your dreams are all critical to success. However, real faith, genuine faith, propels the person of faith to work.
St Paul: Because of God’s love, favor and power, I can sit back and just let his blessings overtake me.
Is that what he said?? No, he said that because of God’s grace he labored more than anyone else.
Go study the lives of the mega-successful and one of the things you will see written in every biography is how hard and long each of them worked for their success. In fact, in Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers: The Story of Success, he calculates that it took a minimum of 10,000 hours of labor before the skill set was mastered and world-class expertise was achieved.
Gladwell, quoting neurologist Daniel Levitin:
“The emerging picture from such studies is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert—in anything. In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, what have you, this number comes up again and again. Of course, this doesn’t address why some people get more out of their practice sessions than others do. But no one yet found a case in which true world-class expertise as accomplished in less time. It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery.”
As Levitin noted, hard work alone does not always lead to success. If I am working hard in a dying industry, if I do not consistently “work” my network of relationships, if I am not intellectually or physiologically fit to compete in the arena of achievement I have chosen, all the hard work I can muster will only lead to minimal success. At Best. However, there will be no success without very hard work over a long period of time.
Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2009
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4 comments:
Monte - I agree totally what you wrote. However, your comment about companies phasing out struck a nerve. A few years ago, I represented a business who had pay telephones all over the city. Every morning at the crack of dawn, people would drive and remove all of the coins from the pay telephones; pay the location its share of the booty; and go to the next location. I remember the day that the owner came into my office after he dismantled and removed his last telephone and told me that he became the last pay telephone company standing.
In that light, one of my favorite solioquys was done by Lawrence Garfield (Larry the Liquidator) in the 1991 movie Other People's Money. This is the best explanation of hard work and capitalism that I ever heard:
Amen.
And amen.
And amen.
You have to forgive me.
I'm not familiar with the local custom.
Where I come from, you always say amen
after you hear a prayer.
Because that's what you just heard.
A prayer.
Where I come from...
...that particular prayer
is called the prayer for the dead.
You just heard the prayer for the dead,
my fellow stockholders...
...and you didn't say amen.
This company is dead.
I didn't kill it. Don't blame me.
It was dead when I got here.
It's too late for prayers.
For even if the prayers were answered
and a miracle occurred...
...and the yen did this
and the dollar did that...
...and the infrastructure did the other thing,
we would still be dead.
You know why?
Fiber optics.
New technologies.
Obsolescence.
We're dead, all right.
We're just not broke.
And do you know the surest way
to go broke?
Keep getting an increasing share
of a shrinking market.
Down the tubes.
Slow but sure.
You know, at one time...
...there must have been dozens
of companies making buggy whips.
And I'll bet the last company around
was the one that made...
...the best goddamn buggy whip
you ever saw.
Now, how would you have liked to have
been a stockholder in that company?
You invested in a business,
and this business is dead.
Let's have the intelligence,
let's have the decency...
...to sign the death certificate,
collect the insurance...
...and invest in something with a future.
"But we can't," goes the prayer.
We can't, because
we have a responsibility...
...a responsibility to our employees,
to our community.
What will happen to them?
I got two words for that:
Who cares?
Care about them? Why?
They didn't care about you.
They sucked you dry.
You have no responsibility to them.
For the last 5 years,
this company bled your money.
Did this community ever say,
"We know times are tough.
We'll lower taxes,
reduce water and sewer"?
Check it out. You're paying
twice what you did 5 years ago.
And our devoted employees who have taken
no increases for the past three years...
...are still making twice
what they made 5 years ago.
And our stock,
one-sixth what it was 5 years ago.
Who cares?
I'll tell you.
Me.
I'm not your best friend.
I'm your only friend.
I don't make anything?
I'm making you money.
And lest we forget,
that's the only reason...
...any of you became stockholders
in the first place.
You want to make money.
You don't care if they manufacture wire
and cable, fried chicken or grow tangerines!
You wanna make money!
I'm the only friend you've got.
I'm making you money.
Take the money.
Invest it somewhere else.
Maybe...
Maybe you'll get lucky,
and it'll be used productively.
And if it is, you'll create new jobs
and provide a service for the economy...
...and, God forbid,
even make a few bucks for yourselves.
And if anybody asks,
tell them you gave at the plant.
And by the way...
...it pleases me that I am called
"Larry the Liquidator."
You know why, fellow stockholders?
Because at my funeral...
...you'll leave with a smile on your face
and a few bucks in your pocket.
Now, that's a funeral worth having.
A record for length of comment here, Steve! I love it!!!
Reminded me of a quote from Thomas Sowell, commenting on the idea that the Big Three in Detroit are too big to be allowed to fail:
"A renowned economist of the past, J.A. Schumpeter, used to refer to progress under capitalism as 'creative destruction'-- the replacement of businesses that have outlived their usefulness with businesses that carry technological and organizational creativity forward, raising standards of living in the process. Indeed, this is very much like what happened a hundred years ago, when that new technological wonder, the automobile, wreaked havoc on all the forms of transportation built up around horses"
Monte - On or about June 1, 2009, economists will be scratching their heads how the impossible will happen to mammoth General Motors.
In light of our national pasttime and with due apologies to Ernest Thayer, I know that he never dreamed that the poem that he wrote in 1888 would used in this manner.
With a smile of Christian charity great GM's visage shown;
It stilled the rising tumult; it bade the game go on;
It signaled to the lender, and once more the spheroid flew;
But GM still ignored it, and the Bankruptcy Judge said, "Strike two."
"Fraud!" cried the maddened thousands, and echo answered fraud;
But one scornful look from GM and the audience was awed.
They saw its face grow stern and cold, they saw its muscles strain,
And they knew that GM wouldn't let that ball go by again.
The sneer is gone from GM's lip, its teeth are clenched in hate;
It pounds with cruel violence its bat upon the plate.
And now the lender holds the ball, and now he lets it go,
And now the air is shattered by the force of GM's blow.
Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright;
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,
And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout;
But there is no joy in Detroit— mighty GM has struck out.
Monte you always write well thought out blogs but this impacted me more than any other. We may all know the value of hard work but contrasting it to merely hoping for a breakthrough while while u laze around was magnificent. I may be guilty of that alot in my life but not anymore, I am stepping up and working my behind off in a smart way and I know though new in this great country I will succeed.
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