The magician’s masked assistants handcuffs the magician’s hand’s behind his back and locks him inside a barrel. A pulley raises the barrel to a height of 200m before releasing it. The barrel accelerates towards earth at 9.8m/s^2(minus air resistance) just before it plunges into the ground and shatters into shards of wood flying in every direction, but where’s the magician? One of the magician’s assistance unmasks and reveals himself to be the magician. The dumbfound audience hails him as a master of illusion. How did he do it?
How does any body do it? When an artist creates a master piece, when a computer scientist designs a revolutionizing multi-touch screen, when an athlete becomes the fastest man to run 100m, how did they do it? The audience only saw the finished masterpiece, the functional multi-touch screen, and the sequence of flawless executions of leg movements that broke the 100m world record. Most of them will never learn of the painstaking hours of practice and preparation, the crushing failures in trials, and the determination and drive for perfection in these individuals.
I had a conversation with a friend recently about whether an artist, engineer or anyone who creates things should reveal their creative process (often not as pretty as one would think). The conversation quickly led to whether any individual or organization who has worked hard and did something amazing should reveal how they got to where they are. After all, people tend to respect those who do amazing things and making it look easy more than those who look like they’ve tried and worked hard (probably because the former is more ‘impressive’). I think having a work ethic is undervalued in this culture, alas that could lead me into another unrelated rant which I will spare my readers.
I’m making the assumption that doing something great requires hardwork and determination. There are cases where great things were achieved by talent alone or great inventions invented through “devine inspiration”, but I think they’re very rare. I believe that for the most part, talent isn’t enough. Don’t get me wrong, if you’re talented at something, whether it’s logical problem solving, being organized, writing or speaking eloquently, it’ll be much easier for you to do impressive things related to that talent. But to do something really amazing, and becoming the next Mark Zuckerberg, Chris Gardner, Barack Obama (strangely enough he hasn’t actually done anything that amazing other than being many times more qualified than the previous president, yet it seems like he should be on this list because people expect him to do amazing things as president) or someone who fits the profile that Seth Godin is looking for in this ‘intership’, it takes not only natural talent, but also determination to succeed, obsession with the fields of interests, and the drive to achieve perfection (and probably a bit of luck).
Now back to the original question: Is it all about the end result? Let’s say after a lot of hardwork at university, you won an academic prize, or you started a successful business. You’ve probably spent quite a bit more time doing uni work than most people in the former case (and have the talent to be in the pool of potential prize winners), and in the later case, you might have had business ideas before that failed, you might have done a significant amount of research and gathered enough evidence to make it successful(and keep it that way). Would you prefer to say(publically), “I’m awesome and did this so effortlessly”, or “My hard work has finally paid off”?
Now imagine that you put in some effort and didn’t succeed, would you lie(if only a little) and say, “given that I put in so little effort, I got what I deserve”, or have some self pitty and say, “I worked so hard, yet acheived so little”?
I think that depending on the outcome and also depending on the type of person you are, you’ll chose to say one or the other whether it’s true or not.
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