Hard work pays off

“I know the price of success: dedication, hard work, and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen.”

– Frank Lloyd Wright

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. One crucial difference between those who are successful and those who aren’t is that those who are — Bill Gates, Jerry Bruckheimer, Mark Burnett, and anyone else who has been on Time’s 100 list — are willing to work hard. They accomplish more in one day than many of us do in a month.

They also surround themselves with people who are just as driven as they are. Look around you. Are your friends and co-workers positive role-models who are maximizing their potential? Or are they people who have carved a career out of misery?

Listen, I’m guilty of succumbing to laziness from time to time. I’m not afraid to admit that. But I refuse to make a life out of it. The bottom line is, success isn’t achieved by sitting on your ass.

‘Literary reading in dramatic decline’

I continue to bemoan the fact that almost no one I know reads books anymore. So has the National Endowment for the Arts, which reported in 2004 that “fewer than half of American adults” read literature today. The study, the NEA said, represented a “loss of 20 million potential readers.”

This is absolutely terrifying.

I love books. I love reading. I cannot imagine a world without books. I guarantee you that all of our great leaders would tell you that the knowledge gained through reading helped them, in some way or another, get to where they are today.

“Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill.”

– Barbara Tuchman

The NEA has taken action by forming The Big Read, an initiative to bring reading back to the center of American culture.