Seasoned Quotes

Make hay while the sun shines.

As much as opportunities are finite like the air we can breathe in at any given moment, trying to jump into every opportunity that comes our way is an effective strategy until it reaches peak level and starts plummeting down.

The effective part is you'll have to experience a lot of noise before being able to discern the signals and have a filtering capability that can cherry pick opportunities that are at the intersection between what you're good at and what the world needs.

Actually, that's not even the effective part, it's the part just after the effective part. Call it the wisdom accumulation phase.

The effective part is developing a skin in the game on taking all opportunities that fall on your lap, bringing about myriad of experiences, which gives rise to not so myriad of lessons until you reach the point of understanding making quality hay is more valuable than making lots of hay and the sun will eventually shine again no matter how long it has disappeared behind the clouds or gone for a rest (sunset).

Strike the iron when it's hot

Remotely similar to the one above. Capitalize on favorable situations and squeeze as much value as one possibly can before the said situation changes or disappears entirely.

I think there's an inherent aspect about doing more for less that governs across many domains.

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Depending on circumstances, amount of effort doesn't always equate amount of results. There's an inefficiency with regards to effort and timing.

Eventually, the pendulum swings back and forth between hot iron moments and cooling periods.

And reaching equilibrium comes more from moving with the pendulum than trying to establish it at one fixed position.

Hard work beats talent when talent(refuses?) doesn't work hard.

I think talent can refuse to work hard, especially when the path ahead is layered with much resistance.

If I try to give a personality type to talent, it definitely would be that person who expects things to come naturally and gets frustrated when they don't.

Talent is like the popular kid in school who's naturally gifted, used to being the top dog, despite sometimes lacking the grit to push through when things get tough. When talent hits its first real wall, it often doesn't know how to break through because it never had to learn that skill.

Hard work, on the other hand, is the underdog. It's the kid who wasn't naturally the smartest or most gifted, but who learned early that consistent effort pays off.

Hard work has calloused hands and a thick skin from all the failures and getting back up.

When talent finally learns to befriend work hard is the moment magic occurs. But until then, hard work will keep chipping away, slowly but surely overtaking talent that's resting on its laurels.

Remembering The Past

By now, it may be clear that the underlying theme with all three popular quotes is the changing nature of situations and our ability to adapt to them.

I kind of miss the days when I would get motivated without knowing anything concrete to do fueled by that motivation.

Kind of because it's a bit bittersweet to look back on those days and realize now that motivation without direction is like having fuel but no map, since you'll burn through it quickly and end up nowhere specific.


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