{"id":1181,"date":"2013-10-31T13:42:27","date_gmt":"2013-10-31T18:42:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/toppun.com\/blog\/?p=1181"},"modified":"2013-10-31T13:42:27","modified_gmt":"2013-10-31T18:42:27","slug":"poem-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/toppun.com\/blog\/2013\/10\/31\/poem-success\/","title":{"rendered":"POEM: Success Can Be Trying"},"content":{"rendered":"

She was not a success<\/span>
\nNor was she even a failure<\/span>
\nFor failure has a prerequisite<\/span>
\nTrying<\/span>
\nNot reaching<\/span>
\nThe successful cobble<\/span>
\nThe stones of failure<\/span>
\nSo becoming<\/span>
\nThe rode integral<\/span>
\nToo success<\/span>
\nFinding that success can be trying<\/span><\/p>\n

The people who fail the most are usually also those who are also the most successful.\u00a0 Exceedingly few people succeed on their first try.\u00a0 First comes trying.\u00a0 Then, comes practicing, or trying something different.\u00a0 As my daughter was growing up, I remember us watching Olympic figure skating, and she asked, “How do they do that?!”\u00a0 I answered, “Lots of practice.”\u00a0 I repeated, practiced, this response with her over the years.\u00a0 When she was about ten years old, she talked about wanting to play the guitar.\u00a0 Her Grandma got her a junior-sized guitar for her birthday.\u00a0 She picked it up and held it in a similar fashion as she had seen the folks she had admired play it.\u00a0 She immediately exclaimed, “It doesn’t work!?”\u00a0 The guitar didn’t play.\u00a0 She had thought that somehow just holding the guitar would somehow draw music out of her.\u00a0 I don’t think she even tried after that.\u00a0 Not to worry, my daughter has tried many other things since then, and persistence is one of her strongest traits.<\/p>\n

In trying, there is great wisdom in knowing the difference between when to hunker down and keep practicing the same thing and when to move onto something different.\u00a0 Some of this depends on balancing our desires to be a virtuoso at something and our desires to experience many different things, being a proverbial jack-of-all-trades.\u00a0 Being a virtuoso opens up new possibilities by being able to perform at a level that few, if any, can match.\u00a0 Taking a more liberal arts approach, you can learn at little bit of everything, though perhaps not be an expert in any particular field.\u00a0 This may strike some as indecisive, unfocused, or even lazy, but it takes advantage of a foundational principle of learning: we learn much more at the beginning of the learning curve than later in the learning curve.\u00a0 For many things in life, there are diminishing returns, less output per unit of effort, by doing\/practicing the same thing over and over.\u00a0 By moving to areas with less mastery, we can harness the “first fruits” effect.\u00a0 By harvesting the low hanging fruits in many different fields, we can learn accelerate the total amount we learn.\u00a0 Plus, cross-fertilization of ideas and experiences is at the core of creativity: combining two or more things in a way to produce something new.\u00a0 Higher level learning is about making robust connections in the brain.\u00a0 Virtuosos achieve deep grooves in their brain and mastery of a particular skill at about 10,000 hours of practice.\u00a0 Of course, devoting 10,000 hours to a greater variety of activities may not produce similarly deep grooves in specific areas of the brain, but perhaps more robust, complex connections.\u00a0 Perhaps the connection between these two different approaches is persisting in a level of challenge that develops and strengthens brain connections.\u00a0 The virtuoso is challenged by a necessarily greater singularity of focus.\u00a0 The jack-of-all-trades is challenged by the awkwardness of regularly venturing into new fields and having to make sense of much new information.\u00a0 Both require patience, which I consider the mother of all virtues.<\/p>\n

In Western civilization, great value is placed on specialization, so that you have easily identifiable, easily marketable skills to navigate “successful” careers.\u00a0 I think that shifting our balance toward trying things new would produce greater returns in quality of life, perhaps be challenging what is meant by “success.”\u00a0 Of course, much is perspective.\u00a0 Thomas Edison tried 10,000 materials to perfect a light bulb filament.\u00a0 When asked whether he thought that represented a waste of time, he declared that he had learned 9,999 ways not to make a light bulb filament.\u00a0 I am with good old Tom, that in if we approach life with a positive attitude toward the trying task of learning, nothing will be wasted.\u00a0 And even then, if you enjoy time wasted, it’s not time wasted.\u00a0 This I have learned — and keep trying to remember…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

She was not a success Nor was she even a failure For failure has a prerequisite Trying Not reaching The successful cobble The stones of failure So becoming The rode integral Too success Finding that success can be trying The … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,15],"tags":[353,400,386,280,428,469,505,471,208,359,418,387,354,594,658,94,53,470,529,429,85,389,380],"class_list":["post-1181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poems","category-political-and-philosophical-musings","tag-attitude","tag-balance","tag-creativity","tag-diminishing-returns","tag-experience","tag-failure","tag-lazy","tag-learning","tag-liberal","tag-life","tag-market","tag-patience","tag-perspective","tag-play","tag-poems","tag-poetry","tag-short-poems","tag-success","tag-time","tag-virtue","tag-western-civilization","tag-wisdom","tag-work"],"yoast_head":"\nPOEM: Success Can Be Trying | Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings | Top Pun's Poetry, Funny Puns, Free Posters, Public Health Radio Show! 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