Day 36: Success Requires Effort

I have both good news and bad news. Let's start with the bad news: Success requires hard work. Now, for the good news: Success indeed requires hard work and nothing more. No inflated vision that needs to be stretched. No inflated ego. No morning routine. No daily schedule like Elon Musk's. No, simply taking action is crucial. Regular work propels us forward. It bridges the gap between the "now" and our vision, where we want to be.

What is needed for this is consistent progress. A writer doesn't publish a book just because they had a great idea. An engineer's mere idea doesn't revolutionize the world. It's the ongoing work. It's the countless hours the author spends typing line by line into their laptop, accompanied by doubts about whether what they write meets their standards. It's the countless sleepless nights when doubts and fears arise. Yes, success is truly a struggle.

One might say that success is a constant upward trajectory. Continuous action and progress. However, it's not that simple because, no matter what we do, we are consistently thrown back. Writers may have a bad day, not want to get up, or simply have writer's block. Perhaps they discard the last five written pages due to doubt.

It's okay to take five steps back. If we cultivate a consistent forward momentum, meaning we sit down regularly and do our work, we will, in sum, always move forward. Maybe today we take five steps back, but tomorrow, we take three steps forward. The day after, only one, and the day after that, two.

Moving forward means investing effort. To invest effort, we must cultivate work. And we must understand that work is necessary to close the gap between our current progress, where we are with our project, and the vision of where we want to be.

Some time ago, I wrote the folliwign article in my old newsletter "Sunday Thoughts": The effort is enough.