15 September 2019: Working Hard

These are excerpts from a podcast by Adam Robinson, courtesy of my son:

In America, we’ve deified “intelligence.” And the problem with “intelligence” is that it works against you. If you’re intelligent, you shouldn’t have to work too hard. Things should come pretty quickly, and if you aren’t intelligent, what’s the point? The better belief is that your success is determined by how hard you work. Then, it’s just a matter of choice. If you want something, work for it, and you will if you want it.

I think it’s important that parents let their children know, just to talk about parents for a sec, that learning is hard. You need to know that learning is hard. It’s not easy. Right? The reason you need to know it’s hard is that if you think it’s easy, as soon as you encounter difficulty, you’re going to think the problem is you. So you need to know it’s hard, going in.`

Link: https://fs.blog/adam-robinson-pt1/

This is my experience too. If you want something to happen - writing a paper, doing a project, running a business - it is hard work and takes a lot of time. We have to try to find the time or the energy to get it done. Sometimes parts of it are easy and seem to happen without any effort, but that is the exception.