The less we deserve good fortune, the more we hope for it. – Seneca
Here’s hoping for good luck. Is that a good strategy, or do you think you should put your best effort into what you do?
What does that mean?
Which team hopes more for good fortune (or good luck), the team which has worked hard and prepared for the contest, or the one which hasn’t done the work to prepare? Which one would be considered more deserving of the good fortune of the victory?
Who hopes for a winning lottery ticket, the person who has saved their money carefully, or the person who has spent it recklessly? Who hopes for love, the kind and gentle souls, or the less pleasant people? Are you starting to see a pattern in this?
In my experience, the people who have put the least effort into an endeavor are the ones who hope the most for good fortune or plain dumb luck. Often, it is because it’s their only chance to get what they want. Instead of doing the work, and putting in the effort, they want something simply handed to them.
Why is putting your best effort into life important?
Yes, good fortune sometimes comes to people. Even those who have put little or no effort into succeeding on their own. The sloppy, the lazy, and the unmotivated, they get lucky sometimes. But is that an excuse to join them and become one of them?
I don’t believe it is. They stand out precisely because they least deserved the good fortune which came to them. Those who work hard and achieve great things, that success is attributed to their efforts, not to good fortune, even if there was a little luck involved.
But the question always comes back to the level of effort you are willing to put into your life. While few people put their best into every single aspect of their life, I believe we should find the most important parts of our own lives, and put forth out best effort.
If we fail to put our best effort into our lives, we can expect results that are at least slightly better than average. We also find that, while welcome, good fortune is no longer a necessity. True, there are always special circumstances, but on whole, which is the better strategy?
Where can I apply this in my life?
The idea of putting forth your best effort could apply to any and every part of your life, if you wished. Most of us will select the portions of our lives where we feel it is the best investment of our time and effort, and consider it a pretty good deal.
The basic idea is to find the most critical areas of our lives, and focus our attention on those things. If we consider being able to provide for ourselves, and possibly for others, we might consider putting our best possible effort into our jobs.
By being the best we can be at our jobs, we can hope to do well enough to not rely on good fortune to continue to provide for ourselves. Those who put less than their best effort into their job might find themselves unable to provide for themselves, and may find themselves hoping for good fortune.
If providing for ourselves is high on the priority list, being aware of our spending habits would also be something into which we would want to put our best effort. It doesn’t matter how good you are at your job or how much you earn if you spend more than that, right?
Like money, our weight is a combination of what goes in and what goes out. If we eat a lot and don’t have a way to burn those extra calories, the body will store the surplus calories. If we consider our health and vitality as one of the more important parts of our life, we might want to put our best effort into it, right?
That would include an appropriate level of calories, a properly balanced mix of foods (based on your personal needs), and a way to burn the extra calories. Whatever you do to burn calories, it is also an area where you might want to put your best effort.
While I’m sure plenty of people have hoped for having the good fortune of having pounds fall away, it’s not something that happens too often, is it? But if it’s important to you, you can put forth the effort and sweat your way back into shape, both by weight as well as fitness and vitality.
While the post has taken an interesting twist from the initial quote, I hope you followed along, and have some ideas about which parts of your life you might want to put in a little more effort. And that’s really what the blog is about, asking you to examine your life, and live your life, not by chance, but by design.
Where in your life will you be putting forth a little more effort, and spending less time hoping for good fortune?
From: Twitter, @philo_quotes
confirmed at : http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/l/luciusanna118148.html
Photo by Kelley Mari
One more thought when you said “Being in the right place, with the right idea is worth it’s weight in gold.”. So being in a poor family, poor country, poor education should be considered wrong? As “There will always be rich, there will always be poor.” – Being poor, being uneducated sometimes are not the fault of poor people. The fault is this world we’re born is so unfair. Even we try our best, we still not can’t correct it. While we’ll try to do best to our family, our beloved ones there’re still many people can not handle it, that task is really difficult.
I know you’re correct about hard-working and self-awareness, but those things are still not enough to explain my question. What, How and Why?
What is it with you and wrong? I said no such thing. In fact, I keep pointing out that some of the richest people on the planet have come from the most humble of backgrounds. Something you don’t seem to understand is that life has a great deal of randomness. Life is, by definition, not fair. Is it fair that one antelope is eaten when another one escapes? Is it fair that one person has a heart attack at 40, while another person lives to 100?
If you require the universe to be fair, you are going to have a very miserable existence. Not everyone wins. Everyone will die. Reality sucks. But life sucks less than the alternative.
I just try to convert everything in math logic.
If in the beginning Bill Gates was born with fortunate score of 7 (good family, good education, good parents) and his effort is 9. By 50 years old, his score would be: (7*9)^50 or 63^50.
An average good person with fortunate score of 5, effort is 2, after 50 years his achievement score is: (5*2)^50 or 10^50. Bill’s effort is 4.5 times as the average but Bill’s achievement score is 6.4^50 times of the average’s after 50 years.
For someone who was born in lower class, his fortune was 2. In order to get same achievement score as the average person, he has to work 2.5 times as hard as the average. In order to get Bill’s achievement score, his effort must be 3.5 times as Bill’s and as 15.75 times as the average effort.
It also means that has to tradeoff many things, doesn’t he?
How hard did Bill Gates actually work? If you are familiar with his story, you’d know he got a break when someone else screwed up, and he kept busy fulfilling the needs of IBM. Eventually, he eclipsed his business partner (IBM). Being in the right place, with the right idea is worth it’s weight in gold.
Today, Linux, a free operating system which is far more robust then Microsoft, is having trouble even being relevant. Microsoft’s own browser was first pushed aside by Firefox, then by Chrome. Lotus 123 fell to Microsoft Excel. Word Perfect fell to Microsoft Word. Most of these changes happened because of teamwork, technology and marketing.
How much work did Bill Gates actually do after the first few years? He hired the best people he could find and tasked them to beat the competition. I see it as simple as that.
As for the math you are doing, I don’t believe it is even relevant. From how it is formulated, it seems biased to make you hate the rich and pity the poor. There will always be rich, there will always be poor. Hard work can lead to fulfillment, which I believe is a far better measure of success. If your only measure of success is money, you live in a very limited world, and you have my deepest sympathy.
Well, thanks for replying my comment in very detailed way though somehow I think we’re misunderstood each other’s thought.
Bill Gates might not a good name to quote as people often think about how rich he is but don’t see what he has really done (technology revolution, economic influence, social influence, corporate influence, philanthropic influence), so if you have your deepest sympathy for me about that thought, I have nothing to say but just except it. I want to know What, How and Why to make Bill successful like that.
Bill seems have all I want, while you, I and many other people work hard but still can’t reach achievements like him, not about money, but about the influences that he’s brought to the world.
Hard working is one of the key factors, I know it and everyone who wants to become truly successful knows it. But the fact is, I’ve met some talented people, they both work hard, they’re doing great things but their careers are still limited to a certain level. Why can’t they reach level like Bill? There are many people who work days and nights, try to improve their selves, their methods but their achievements are still limited. Whatever they try, they still never reach their final goals. Since you mentioned facebook, I’d like to bring Yahoo. Is it only because of hard-working and technology so that facebook won to Yahoo? No.
In these days I’ve reviewed and tried to encourage myself that % age-gain (or self-growth rate) is much better that the final achievement (absolute number). Only by that thought can ease my bitterness for unlucky people. When we don’t get what we think we want, we still have chance to get what we really need in life. Just work hard and we’ll find it. But to become what we really want, I don’t think hard-working is enough.
The key you are missing is opportunity. As long as you work for someone else, you are limited by what they think you are worth. If you want the kind of success like the examples cited by both you and I, you need freedom. With freedom comes risk. For every Bill Gates there are a thousand broken (and broke) people who tried and failed. Unless you have both the opportunity to succeed, and the drive to move forward at any cost, you will never come close to achieving what he achieved. Even if you have both the opportunity and work hard, you still have about a one in a thousand chance of being in the right place at the right time with the right idea.
I believe your math model is seriously flawed, and that you are using a broken compass to set your course. It is your life, and you are free to use whatever tools you think will help you the most, but I have profound dislike for that kind of math.
As for having to “ease my bitterness for unlucky people,” I just don’t understand that. Why are you bitter about unlucky people? To feel that way is to not only not understand statistics, but the very basis of mathematics. Please clarify.
If what you want requires more than hard work, you have predestined yourself to failure. You are requiring luck to favor you to be happy? That is neither a sane nor safe path forward. Again, it’s your life, but I would urge you against any course of action that requires luck for you to be happy.
There’s something poped up that I couldn’t resist but ask before continue reading the rest: If someone was born under unfortunate conditions (poor family, poor country) and tried his best to change his fate, how hard does he have to work in order to become someone like Bill Gates or Larry Page? If Bill Gates works hard, say 20 times than the average, how many times of effort that person has to work to achieve similar achievements like him?
I have no idea. But I would challenge you to better define the term ‘success’ and what it means to you. If all you are doing is trying to amass a fortune, the easiest way is to smuggle valuable contraband. If you want to make a mark on technology, ask the founders of facebook or google how to become the next Bill Gates.
As for becoming something great when starting from nothing, take a look at history, and how many of the millionaires (and later billionaires) came from humble roots. From the industrial Revolution onward, being in the right place with the right ideas counted for far more than the money your parents amassed. Even before that, in the Renaissance, being on the favored spice routes was the ticket to the good life. Oil, whether a Texan or an Arab, is a great thing.
Yes, some of it is dumb luck, but we can all have a fulfilling life simply by working hard. Yes, people always seem to want more. But you’d be surprised at the number of people who are fulfilled simply by loving their families and their fellow human beings. Money is nice, but it can’t buy happiness.
Thanks for reading, and for leaving the comment.