1
In the book
"Rich Dad Poor Dad", there is a term called "rat race
trap".
The mouse had
to run on the wheel in order to eat the cheese in front of him. The faster it
goes, the faster the wheels turn. Until the end exhaustion, also can't reach a
mouthful of cheese. In fact, if you want to eat cheese, you need to jump up,
not run forward.
But the mouse
just ran with its head buried in its head, exerting force in the wrong
direction, wasting its energy.
Many people
are like this mouse, walking forward non-stop, but rarely stop to think. In the
busy cycle, they are trapped in the cage of life. After all, the life you want
is not accumulated by ineffective efforts. Without deep thinking, all hard work
is in vain.
I think such
questions have more or less appeared in our minds.
Why do we
work overtime until 12 o'clock in the middle of the night, but our colleagues
get promoted?
Why do we enrol
in many courses and study hard every day but still get little effect?
Why do we pack
our schedule so full and we can't grow at all?
Physical
effort is just a habitual exercise of muscles, and diligence without thought is
actually the greatest laziness.
Efforts
without thinking, without structure, without logic, will only lead you into a
cycle of fatigue and inefficiency.
Getting rid
of low-quality diligence and developing the habit of deep thinking is the first
step in life advancement.
2
There is
another story in the book "Rich Dad Poor Dad".
There is a
village with no water source within a mile radius, and the villagers can only
drink the rainwater that falls occasionally.
To solve the
water problem, the village selected young men Ed and Bill to be responsible for
the water supply, and signed contracts with both of them.
After the
contract was completed, Ed couldn't wait to buy two large barrels to carry
water from the distant lake for the villagers to use.
However, even
if he gets up early and works late every day, it cannot fundamentally solve the
water supply problem.
Another young
Bill, who disappeared after signing the contract.
Half a year
later, he brought back an engineering team and worked hard for a year to
establish a complete water supply system.
This method
greatly saves labour costs, and the price is much cheaper than Ed.
Soon, the whole
village used Bill's water.
In a hurry,
Ed called his two sons to carry water even harder, and the price of water
dropped even more than before, but in the end he found that he could not
compete with Bill at all.
The different
circumstances of Bill and Ed reminded me of a story circulating in the Ford
Motor Company.
Ford's boss
once hired an expert to evaluate the performance of employees.
The expert
said after the inspection: "There is a lazy guy who stays in the office
all day and wastes your money. Every time I pass by, I see him sitting around
with his feet on the table."
The boss
laughed when he heard that, "I know this guy is lazy, but he once came up
with an idea that saved our company millions of dollars. He put his feet on the
table like that when he thought of that idea."
What do these
two stories tell us?
Because no
matter in life or in the workplace, people often only look at the results, not
the process.
Mediocre
people always emphasize their own efforts, and then do nothing; while masters
do things, they often act after thinking, and speak with results.
Effort is
just a "tactic", but developing a global thinking, spreading out the
map, and finding the right entry point is the "strategy" that will
get twice the result with half the effort.
Therefore, working
overtime every day does not make us great people, and working from dawn to dusk
does not necessarily make us better.
If a person
is not good at thinking, no matter how hard he works, it will be difficult for
him to innovate and make breakthroughs.
Only those
with sharp vision and advanced mind can be favoured by fate.
What really
widens the gap between people is never the degree of effort, but the depth of
thinking and the quality of diligence.
3
Chris Bailey,
the author of the book "Don't Let Ineffective Efforts Destroy You",
was called "probably the most efficient person in the world" by TED.
He proposed that there are three elements of high-efficiency life:
Time, energy,
focus.
Any efficient
life is related to one or more of these elements.
If we don’t
have any plans for life and work, and rush all day without any focus, we will
lose efficiency due to distraction, and thus fall into the vicious circle of
"the busier the poorer".
I think of a
survey conducted by Harvard University, targeting a group of young people with
similar intelligence, education, and environment.
Studies have
found that those who set long-term goals from the beginning have basically
become successful people after 25 years;
People with
short-term goals also successfully entered the middle class of society;
Those who
have no goals are almost at the bottom of society, often unemployed, and rely
on social relief to survive.
There is a
saying in "University": Make a decision before you move, and you will
gain something when you know it.
When a
person's goal is clearer, the path to the goal will be clearer.
It is absurd
for many people to repeat their busyness day after day, but imagine a different
future.
What really
makes you stronger is that you can establish a thinking framework and grasp the
underlying logic of things.
Learn to
manage by objectives and put your energy on the cutting edge in order to
maximize your efforts.
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