The power of consistent hard work and efforts.

“I start early and I stay late, day after day, year after year, it took me 17 years and 114 days to become an overnight success.”

Lionel Messi

  • Our minds are hardwired to improve and learn slowly. You crawl, then walk and later run. The 1,000-hour rule. Multiple studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of regular and consistent practice.
  • You want to get better at cricket? Go and start playing 10 hours per day for the next 3 years. Find yourself 24/7 drowning in cricket news, ideas and techniques. Become an absolute cricket buzz. You will reach the top eventually.
    • We under-appreciate what we want to be or do in real life. We are often attracted by the glamour and NOT the real passion of anything.
    • You can write 10 hours per day or do dramatics 10 hours per day or play 10 hours per day ONLY if you really love your passion and NOT because you want to become a star or celebrity.

Money is not a motivating factor. Money doesn’t thrill me or make me play better because there are benefits to being wealthy. I’m just happy with a ball at my feet. My motivation comes from playing the game I love. If I wasn’t paid to be a professional footballer I would willingly play for nothing.

Lionel Messi Quotes

  • It takes a lot of hard work to reach the top. You will get demotivated, you will get disheartened, you may not get the desired quick results, but ultimately you will get there, only if you are willing to go on working hard and continuously improving, without measuring up the results or efforts.
  • This only one fact is so difficult to gauge and accept that you improve unprecedentedly over time.
    • There will be people more gifted than you in your domain and they will learn and grow faster. Remember, if they don’t have real passion, they can never reach the top.
    • Your growth might be slow, but realise that knowledge is a cumulative and compounding skill. The learning curve is ever exponential and never linear. You will, however, have to reach a minimum threshold to get that exponential growth. No one ever knows when that threshold shall come. Go on focussing on your prime job and working hard, eventually you will get there.
    • Whenever people say ‘you’ can’t do it, usually it means ‘they’ can’t do it.
    • Some people shall be luckier than you to be at right place at right time. Some people might have struck the golden idea at right moment. In any case, in long run, hard work (sincere and consistent) will beat everything.

Final notes

  1. Choose a domain which you ‘really’ love and enjoy. Don’t choose life goals based on glamour or money or because ‘someone’ else did it.
  2. Go on working hard, focussing only on your core job and improving yourself continuously. Leave the results to God.
  3. Starting is often the most difficult step of any goal.
  4. Focus on what logic people offer to oppose your ideas. Neglect their opinion and biases not backed by reason.

Mind learns in a non linear way. Sometimes, no progression in months and at other times jumping heaps unseen in days.

You can never time your success. No one knows when that jump curve will start.

What is the most valuable skill a person must know?