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Quote of the Day – Diligence
What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence. – Samuel Johnson
I write. A lot. Every day. It is easy. I am good at it.
Is it easy because I am good at it or am I good at it because it is easy?
Actually, neither. It is easy and I am good at it because I write a lot every day – and have been doing so for over 60 years.
Even in grade school I wrote a lot. Short stories, history papers, game rules. By middle school I was doing term papers and editing newsletters (which at that age, meant I was writing most of them). I was the communications office for my Civil Air Patrol cadet squadron in my early teens (which meant I wrote the press releases) and in high school and college I edited wargaming fanzines and wrote wargaming scenarios. I also rewrote wargames rules for friends to make them readable.
When I graduated from college as an engineer, I became the guy in the group that wrote the reports, and later the manuals. In the first four years in the field I published around a dozen professional papers. I edited the JSC Astronomical Society’s newsletter for several years. Later I wrote general interest magazine articles and later books. Fifty books, so far.
Do you think it came easy? Think again.
I have copies of my early writings. (Thanks to my parents, who kept some of the early school papers.) They sent one story I wrote in 4th or 5th grade to an uncle who was an ad man in New York City to see if it could be published. (It wasn’t. I got a long letter back from someone in the publishing industry explaining why.) I have a few of the early newsletters I did in high school and college.
They stink. Really. The individual who reviewed my story was right. It was unpublishable. Some of my writings were good for the age I wrote them. And yes, I improved over time. But I improved because I kept writing. I was diligent, writing almost every day. And with practice came ease. Until finally, in the 1990s, people were willing to pay me for what I wrote.
It is true. You do something enough every day for long enough and it gets easy. Whether it is writing, ship modeling, carpentry, playing a musical instrument, or shooting hoops. You may not become NBA or NFL great, you may never play in Carnegie Hall, but you become better than 85 percent of everyone else. I have never been a New York City published author or bestselling author, but I can produce four publishable books annually working weekends and evenings.
Pretty much everyone can achieve that level of competence in virtually any field given diligence in exercising their skills in that field. The trick is to realize how bad you will be when you start off, and persevere regardless. When I first started making model ships it was hard and I was horrible at it. But I continued doing it and eventually became good at that, too.
Diligence is the gateway to doing anything with ease.
Published in Group Writing
The only problem is that diligence is such hard work! Most people (including me on more occasions than I care to admit) are too lazy to be diligent.
Got to admit, I am lazy about a lot of things, too. I am just not lazy about the things I think count.
There is strong evidence that you are genetically inclined to write alot and write well.
This is the key. When I started handling dogs, I was sometimes mystified as to why the dog wasn’t obeying, why I couldn’t “read” him, etc. Once I really worked at it, by taking days off with the dog and running with him, working obedience, doing exercises, I found it easier. Then one day I realized I wasn’t working the dog anymore. We were working together. I could read him effortlessly. To an observer it looked like I was reading his mind (a colonel actually said that to me) because his cues were so subtle. No one except the training NCO and the Kennelmaster saw the hours upon hours I put into creating that bond.
Put in the work and you get rewarded.
I think that being bad at the start is a big barrier to overcome for many. When it does not come out quite right we tend to get discouraged and give up. The results of the perseverence to toil on through failure is often called talent.
“They who lack talent expect things to happen without effort. They ascribe failure to a lack of inspiration or ability, or to misfortune, rather than to insufficient application. At the core of every true talent there is an awareness of the difficulties inherent in any achievement, and the confidence that persistence and patience something worthwhile will be realized. Thus talent is a species of vigor.”
Who said that? Teddy Roosevelt?
Eric Hoffer
Thanks.
Well Eric Hoffer is to a degree wrong from what I understand.
“Dawg” needed the innate genetic ability to develop his skills as anyone needs innate genetic ability to be good or great at something. Talent is generally understood as being an innate ability that is separate with work ethic.
Eric Hoffer rightly celebrated the necessity of hard work but talent is very different from vigorous hard work. Sorry to harp on the same point constantly but all the evidence suggests this grim reality.
In my experience talent – innate genetic ability – helps one get great at something. Diligence and practice allows most people (at least those without physical and mental handicaps) to become good at something. I do not have a natural aptitude for mathematics. The only classes I failed in K-12 were advanced math classes. Despite that, I worked on that weakness. As a result I was able to make a successful living as an engineer for over forty years.
You can get to the 85th percentile through just hard work. (Genius is defined as the 99th percentile or above – which simple means you are smarter than 99 out of 100 people.)
Well I don’t have the numbers in front of me but I think your assertion that you can get to the 85th percentile of something through hard work is plain wrong. (He said respectfully.)
I wrote an OK essay lamenting the evidence that apparent hereditarianism is real and unpleasant. I wish that my prose was better but my point still stands. Your potential is determined by your genes. Quite possibly your genes matter more than your effort. I don’t want this to be so but that is how interpret the Truth.
I hate to say it, but we ricochetti live a myopic, sheltered existence, that started with our genetic makeup, often times enhanced by parents and teachers that pushed, encouraged and forced us to achievements. I dare say, that this elite group could likely reach the 85th% of most anything we tried.
Unfortunately, the gifts given to us, were not equally extended to the general population.
There are a very large percentage of people who might possess incredible perseverance who despite their efforts may only achieve average – at best.
Mozart is one example of the idea that for some rather immortal beings, there are talents that arise almost like an all encompassing logic from a source outside of the human realm.
Genetics may have played a part in Mozart’s abilities as his father was a masterful musician and composer. Yet other human children had successful musicians as fathers but still somehow avoided the ability to play the harpsichord for Austria’s Queen Mother when only five years old.
“Wolfgang started to pick out notes on the clavier at a very tender age and was soon composing. He wrote his first Minuet and Trio when he was five. It’s likely that his father notated this piece for him as Wolfgang’s penmanship probably wasn’t yet up to the task, but he very quickly began to notate his own music. At seven years old he was quite proficient enough on the violin to write for the instrument. He went on to learn the piano and viola.” ( https://www.cmuse.org/mozart-as-a-child/ )
Of course there was also diligence involved in his practicing playing the harpsichord and practicing writing songs. The diligence most likely came about because of his father’s interest in encouraging both him and his lesser known sister.** Prior to playing for royalty at age five, Wolfgang Amadeus had to have spent time learning how to play the harpsichord. And his ability to compose melodies had also been encouraged by his dad.
I once knew a family who vehemently complained that their youngest, a baby not even 11 months old, had yet to learn to say even the simplest words. His older sister had held a vocabulary of five or six words by the time she was 11 months old.
I felt so frustrated by the mom and dad focusing on this fact. When I spent time with the baby, he sang little melodies that were a delight, but since his parents were only looking for words, his musical talents may well have been left to fall by the way side, while he grew up always in his sister’s shadows. (These folks were neighbors and moved away before I could see what would become of the young song maker.)
** Nannerl Mozart was a child prodigy like her brother Wolfgang Amadeus, but her musical career came to an end when she was 18.
Perhaps You should vigorously work harder on that instead of wishing.
You are correct but you do not negate my point. I have not worked as hard as I should on my talents but I think you still underestimate how much of talent is inherent.
You just stated You “wish” instead of putting forth the effort.
Yer point’s negated.
Oh yeah? Well your point is negateder!
Three years ago I first attempted an aspect of the tabletop gaming hobby that I had never had the self-confidence to do before – painting miniature figurines. I watched dozens of YouTube videos before putting brush to paint, learning the basics. What had always held me back was the expectation that I would never be satisfied with the final result. In one of the videos, the narrator advised his beginner viewers to always keep the first minatures you ever painted, not because they are so well done, but so you can look at them years from now and see how much better your painting skills have become.
Since painting that first set of five Space Marines, I’ve gone on to paint dozens of additional figurines. Yes, my skills have definitely improved and, if I continue to paint and experiment with new techniques and methods, I expect they will improve even further. Will I ever become an award-winning miniatures artist? Not likely, but who knows? But at this point I am skilled enough such that the results satisfy me, and impress my friends and relatives. And I am my own harshest critic, because only I know what I wanted each miniature to look like as compared to how it ended up looking.