One of my favorite quotes is by Calvin Coolidge: “Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not: the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.” I think there are some things that you won’t ever learn or know without spending a lot of time on it. But these days, there are too many get rich quick schemes that people hope are true. The lure of a shortcut where you don’t have to work hard is too compelling. Why do people work 40 hour weeks when you could instead read the “4 Hour Work Week” for 4 hours and watch Netflix for the other 36 hours?
All of these legendary musicians or artists or CEOs have been extremely resilient. They’ve been through unbelievably difficult times where no one would blame them for giving up. Ben Horowitz said that Zuckerberg was almost kicked off of the board of Facebook many times in the past, and he was a genius and extremely talented and that he barely made it. Every successful person knows how to deal with struggles and has a thick skin to fight through the hard times. It's easy sometimes to only see the effects of their hard work and persistence, and forget about all of the struggles. Don't look at the tip of the iceberg and forget about the gigantic part underwater.
This doesn’t mean that if you absolutely hate something, keep doing it hoping that you will like it in the future. I’m saying that to become skilled at something, you will always hit roadblocks, and you need to give things a chance sometimes. Or multiple times. And there are things worth going through roadblocks and there are things that aren’t worth it.
This also doesn’t mean that you can’t become successful quick. You just should be willing to put in the time and the effort, and make sure you’re doing things for the right reasons. I strongly believe that even if Facebook or Snapchat didn’t take off quickly as it did, the founders would still be willing to be in the years to their company because they believe in it.
Success comes from working intelligently persistently. Persistence is a quality that is lacking in many people these days. It is rare. People give up all the time now when things get hard. It is even rarer people who persist in intelligent ways. Do not make excuses for giving up. Because nobody cares. Don’t use clichés like “Work smart, not hard” as an excuse to slack off after an hour of work, or school, or whatever else you are doing. These people who have become successful have spent thousands of hours doing meaningful, thoughtful, intelligent work. Stop looking for shortcuts in books or webpages with clickbait titles.
Work hard or work smart? The phrasing of the question almost has the connotation that if you do hard work, you’re a fool. I don’t like the saying “Work smart, not hard” because it sounds like if you can’t find a clever solution to your projects in minimal time, then you’re not working efficiently. That’s not true. Sometimes, clever solutions don’t come from just thinking for a few minutes or a few hours or even a few days. You have to implement sometimes sub-optimal solutions and find where the problems lie and then go back to the whiteboard. It’s a process of coming up with an idea, trying it out, realizing it doesn’t work, then try to come up with a better idea. It’s a tedious process of trial and error, not just of thinking brilliantly of one idea.
Working smart is good. We can all agree on that. But you have to have persistence as well. It’s as bad to work smart with little effort as it is to work unintelligently with much effort. If your obstacle is to get past a wall, trying to headbutt it or tackle it for weeks until it breaks is a bad idea. But it’s also a bad idea to realize that you can walk around the wall, take 3 steps, and then tell yourself you did good work today and just sit down and relax. Neither person would have accomplished their goal. If you want to do something with your life, you need a mixture of both. Genius comes from both hard work and smart work. Do not discount either.
Be persistent in your passions. Believe in them.