A Life Lesson

This year I’m taking part in “Bloganuary” – a series of writing prompts published throughout the month by Mindy Postoff. Today’s writing prompt is “What is a life lesson you feel everyone can benefit from learning?”

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While writing this the clock is ticking towards 1am on Sunday morning, so I suppose technically I missed the Saturday writing prompt. Let’s pretend that Saturday extends until you fall into bed, then we’re good.

So. What life lesson do I think everyone can benefit from? Maybe that you should find time earlier in the day to write, rather than burning the midnight oil and throwing out a post in the early hours?

Being half serious, I do have a life lesson to share. Hard work pays off.

I’ve always been a believer in the maxim “the harder you work, the luckier you get”. The same sentiment extends into many facets of daily life, and is described by numerous inspirational quotes. The root of it all though is hard work.

When faced with difficult or even seemingly impossible situations, often the only answer is to look for something productive to do, and do it. And when you’ve done that thing, find the next thing, and do it.

A couple of years ago I was working on a software development project where a significant flaw was discovered in the source code – meaning several months work would have to be re-written almost line-by-line in order to fix the problem. I stayed up all night, and methodically worked through the problem. By the morning the code not only worked, but was in a much better place than it had been the day before. I pulled the project out of the fire – not by talent, or ingenuity, or a magical lightbulb moment – by plain old hard work.

Doggedness and determination are worth far more than brilliance in the long run. While a moment of genius solves one problem, determination and resolve help solve many problems, every day.