"You learn something not by learning, but by understanding"
-Anonymous
Throughout all your life, you've been given this: work hard and you will achieve your dreams. Even teachers promote something like this, "You reap what you sow." And my god, even Einstein said success is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. I beg to differ.
In swimming, the best swimmers are not the ones who can do the most push ups. The best swimmers are the ones that knows how to do a flip turn successfully, and how to stream line so that the least amount of force is used to produce the most efficient outcomes. The bad swimmers fight against their own current, wobbling back and forth, with their hands splashing hard against the watter. However, the best swimmer are able to swim from one end to the other like a rocket, effortlessly and still powerful.
Let's explore Carnegie. Andrew Carnegie was a gazillionaire, an unparalleled money making machine of the developing ages of America. He was smart, crude and unfair, but he was extremely successful. Carnegie eliminated other steel producing companies and created a monopoly when he was the only steel making company and everybody had to pay him no matter what. Didn't have to perspire to be successful.
You should still however, pursue your dreams. Not meaning to nayslay you from trying to do whatever you're trying to do, but try to learn it the easy way than the hard way. At school, you memorize the multiplication tables, and you have to complete pages after pages of tedius sheets. However, the same desired results could've been reached if you simply spent more time understanding the problem and not working so hard to apply a table.
For some odd reason, teachers promote the idea that the only way to be successful is that you work hard at something.
A bit of digression. I'm not saying working hard is wrong. You need to perspire. You need to work hard. In fact, to swim effectively, you need to reduce drag and increase effort. However, why should work hard to increase your effort when you could easily reduce drag?
Problem solving, and success in general, requires the laziness to shun anything but a brilliant solution, but the persistence and skill to see a brilliant solution to the end. Edison found such a brilliant solution (instead of working even harder to perfect the oil lamp), but he was still far away from a working light bulb. As you said, it is necessary to work smarter and work harder.
ReplyDeleteBut I do agree with you that creativity, the aspect of finding the easy way out, has been almost turned into a commodity to the point where one can go to a store and buy creativity (a.k.a. learning tools). The people who work hard and learn facts are the "smart" ones in school, and people consider knowledge and intelligence the same thing. I pride myself in how hard I work to achieve my goals, but I also strongly believe that you need to run hard in the right direction.
To be successful, you need creative laziness and relentless will.
You hit the nail right on the spot.
Therefore, motivation is just a contributing factor to will to drive creativity...
ReplyDeleteYup! I have a theory that what we call "talent" is really just a liking for something, causing you to approach it with an open mind. This causes you to make enormous progress in that subject.
ReplyDeleteI disagree. A talent is something that we're good at; it doesn't matter if we like it or not.
ReplyDeleteA gift is something we have a birth such as a superior photographic memory.
My theory is that we are good at certain things only because we are born with a natural affinity for those things, and we work harder and work smarter to acquire more ability in those things. I don't think that most talented people are born with an advantage, only that they are able to make faster and deeper progress in certain areas than the rest of us.
ReplyDeleteAble to make faster and deeper progress ...
ReplyDelete... isn't that an advantage?