I was recently reading an article by David Wong on Cracked.com where he says that the decaying American work ethic can be attributed to movies like the Karate Kid.
If you are a child of the 80's, you know this movie. Very, very short version: A kid moves from the east coast to sunny Reseda, CA with his mom. He's new in town and doesn't quite fit in. He's bullied by a group of kids who have obviously been practicing martial arts for quite some time. One night, Daniel finds himself on the wrong end of a fight with these 4 or 5 guys and is beaten up and humiliated. Shortly after, he meets Mr. Miyagi, a neighborhood man who tells Daniel he will teach him Karate. In basically a 5 minute montage (after a few classic scenes demonstrating Mr. Migayi's unique teaching techniques), this kid goes from being a victim to being accomplished enough to be the champion of the karate tournament and kicking serious butt.
I am a huge fan of this movie, but you know that this couldn't be real. Even if Daniel spent the entire school year (nights & weekends) training, he would not have been the champion of the tournament. I'm not even sure he would have placed. At his age group, most of those kids would have been studying karate for at least a decade. Whether those kids who were bullying Daniel where assholes and deserved the ass-kickin' or not is irrelevant (they were and they did). What is pertinent is that, logistically speaking, they would have trained more and worked harder at least a decade before our hero even met Mr. Miyagi. In real life, the short amount of time in which Daniel had to train would not have yielded the same result - no matter how phenomenal a sensei Mr. Migayi was ("Wax on! Wax off!").
Another book that speaks to the huge factor hard work is in success is Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. If you aspire to greatness in any field, you should read this book. If you are looking for a magic number, a set amount of time you can expect to devote to a particular field before becoming an "expert" he has the number: 10,000 hours. Yep, that's how much time you should expect to spend before you have the unmitigated gall to say that you've mastered "it" - whatever "it" is. Sounds like a lot, right? That's because it is.
Our collective issue, as I see it, is that we want the quick fix. Hell, I'd like the quick fix too. Lottery winners and folks that inherited money just for being born seem to be popular media favorites. It's boring to hear about people that worked hard and sacrificed for years...people that earned it. That's why the montages in movies go so fast - if the movies actually showed how long it actually took, people would fall asleep long before the movie ended. Even the actors that appear in these movies train for months before filming even starts to make the action look real. To make you believe it.
For example, people seem to like Kobe Bryant. Fair warning here: I'm not one of those people. However, by all accounts he has an incredible work ethic. He's the best in the league. He's won championships, but he still practices. He's the first one to arrive and the last one to leave. He practices in the off season. I'm sure he takes a vacation or five, but he's still working on his game. He's always working on it. That's what people have to do to succeed - they work hard. Then they work some more. They work when the rest of us are sleeping. Why do they do it? Because that's what it takes. I'm absolutely sure that Kobe Bryant gets up some days and thinks "I just don't feel like practicing today." What I'm also pretty sure of is that he fights through those feelings and goes to practice anyway. He lifts weights anyway. He runs anyway. Talent isn't enough. The book also speaks to this. Once you reach a certain level of talent in any given field, then the fact that you actually have the talent doesn't matter - everyone at that level has the talent, it becomes a "so what?". All that matters at that level is how hard you are willing to work. What sacrifices you are willing to make to ascend to the next level, and the one after that and so on.
Let's face it, we all know to people who we consider talented and smart, but that don't go anywhere in life. In our eyes, they could do anything they want - instead they are on your couch, asking you for $20 and a place to stay. Talent isn't enough. Truth be told, work ethic will beat talent almost every time. That's why there are millionaires that have never finished college, because it's not really about the diploma. Don't get me wrong, education definitely has it's place, but it is a means to an end - not the end itself. Two very successful famous people, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are college dropouts. The "piece of paper" wasn't what was going to make them successful. It was their drive, their work ethic that made it possible for them to be where they are today. They just dug their heels in and worked their tails off, taking no prisoners, not giving any excuses. If you have read any articles where either of them are interviewed, they will say they've failed a lot. Things didn't work out the way they planned. Steve Jobs founded Apple and was ousted by his own board of directors. In spite of this incredibly humbling setback he decided to press on. He founded another company, Next. In an ironic twist of events, Next was bought by Apple. No pun intended, but next thing you know, he's back at the helm...at Apple.
It's not all downhill. If you weren't born Kobe Bryant or Bill Gates, that's OK. Those shoes are already filled anyway. You have yourself. You have some kind of talent, I know you do. You might not even know what it is yet, but it's there. Each day you wake up, you get another chance to go after the life you really want. Figure out what you love to do Decide each day that you will go after what you want. Know that it will be hard. You won't want to pursue it everyday, but it must be done. What's the alternative? Having a a boat load of regrets???? Sitting somewhere in an old folks home, with the damning clarity of hindsight thinking about what you could have done, but were too afraid?
Personally, that's my definition of hell.
