The Myth of “Perseverance Wins”
YouTube is full of them.
Facebook memes fill your inbox.
Books, articles, and myriad Ted Talks discuss them.
The ones who are now great but once were not.
We all know the stories, almost legends.
Einstein failing math class.
Clint Eastwood being fired from his first studio job.
Charles Barkley not making the high school team.
The way they are written makes us laugh at the coaches, teachers, and business people who were so stupid to not see the greatness in these people when they were younger.
Well, that’s bullshit.
Einstein simply sucked as a math student.
Clint Eastwood simply sucked as an actor and deserved to be fired.
And Barkley simply couldn’t play basketball as well as the other kids in school.
Here is where the ethos bullshit of modern times jumps in and tells us this total freaking lie:
“They got to where they are by working harder.”
Absolute rubbish.
They got to where they are because they got better.
They got better because they didn’t allow a failure to derail them.
Yeah, they worked hard – but they changed up what they were doing and increased their value by being better at what they did.
Barkley practiced free throws for hours after the team went home… even after he was on a team.
Eastwood kept working at his craft and took chances with low budget Italian westerns where he was allowed to practice his craft.
Einstein studied and studied, and when he got tired, he kept on studying.
None of these people were remarkable when they had their failure, what separates them from so many others is that they learned from that failure and GOT BETTER.
If you want to become a carpenter, you are going to hit your fingers with a hammer a few times.
If you do that while you are learning, the point is to learn how to not hit your fingers with the hammer.
But if after 5 years you are still hitting your fingers because you refuse to learn how to NOT hit your fingers… well, you ain’t never gonna be a carpenter.
Same with all arts.
Malcolm Gladwell discussed the 10,000-hour rule (it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become great at something).
And – as usual – it was widely reported as this simplistic rule… just do it for 10,000 hours and VOILA you WIN!
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Practicing doesn’t make perfect.
Only perfect practicing can make perfect.
If you practice it wrong for 10,000 hours, you will be a master at doing it wrong.
What you need is a mentor, instructor, sounding board, or standard bearer to keep you focused on doing it right.
You need measurable goals, attainable benchmarks, challenges to meet, standards to exceed, and more.
Doing it ‘on your own’ is a good Hollywood story, but in real life, there are myriad coaches, trainers, mentors, teammates, and others who help you get to those goals you have set.
I see it a lot with photography.
Having been around this business for so many decades, I am witness to a lot of people who want to become photographers but simply cannot get past themselves.
And that is the best way of putting it.
They think they are unstoppable, incredible, better than all the rest… and yet, they aren’t.
But their ego won’t let them seek advice, or help, or critique.
They simply aren’t interested in getting better because they ARE better in their own minds.
And when they fail… well, it was certainly not their fault.
So they bluster on doing the same things they were doing.
Again. And again. And again.
But instead of becoming better, they become entrenched in mediocrity and cannot move from the trench their ‘hard work’ has created.
Then, of course, they start blaming everyone else.
It was the industry, the business, the competition, the general unfairness of it all.
The market is not unfair – it is the market.
If you have what it takes the market can be a wonderful place.
If not, then it can become your nemesis.
And yes, other factors like marketing, personality, ability to deal with people, gratitude, and a whole litany of what success looks like in society come into play.
But you have to deliver.
They say that doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results is a sign of mental illness.
And they are probably right.
Even if you want it really bad.
Even if you do it for 10,000 hours.