Work Hard (2007)
>"It is also important to direct your effort in a fruitful direction rather than a fruitless one"<p>This is actually the most critical sentence in the entire article.<p>I read an article somewhere, maybe 25 or 30 years ago, that was about this exact topic.<p>Some successful scientist, I don't even remember his name now, was asked about his success.<p>He said that others worked just as hard and diligently. But his skill was in selecting the projects that had a high degree of probability of success. He would watch others in his profession and see how they made horrible choices in the selection of their work. The unsuccessful people made a series of unwise choices. Tilting at windmills that had exceptionally poor chance of success, areas where there was no funding available or very difficult to get funding, and all sorts of other problems.<p>The same thing is true with everything. For example, lots of people start businesses that are shitty selection right off the bat - they have almost zero chance of success before they even begin. All teh perfect execution and hard work will be for naught. The founder has blinders on.<p>You always hear about the successes. People always say false things like, the idea is 1%, execution is 99% of it. Not true. It's more like, the idea is worth 99%, and the execution is the other 99% of success. Trust me, I've seen a LOT of great execution on shit ideas and the company goes down the drain. You just never hear of them. And by the way, this is in regards to ideas that are actually have a corporation started around them, as opposed to just aimlessly talking about ideas.<p>Anyways, take what you will from what I just wrote.