“One must work, nothing but work, and one must have patience”…

A few days ago I posted about the relationship between Rainer Marie Rilke and Auguste Rodin.

Rodin had a mantra that he lived by that seeped into Rilke: “One must work, nothing but work, and one must have patience.”

I have a very profound respect for this idea, as it seems like the only way to become proficient in a skill.

There is no good or bad, no success or failure, just a single minded focus on the process over time.

I’ve seen it more times that I can count of someone coming into an opportunity, however you wish to define that word, and trying and failing.

Only then realizing it’s hard work and then seeking something else.

There is an idea of the valley of despair, where you in your new endeavor face nothing but failure with your mind and perhaps those around you telling you to quit, and it is in this moment where success or failure over the long term are found.

The ability to push through.

To persist.

To have grit.

This is the true nature of skill acquisition.

As has been demonstrated over and over again this grit will eventually lead to the tipping point, where what was hard becomes easy.

I am in complete support of this idea of single minded focus on the actual few things that move the needle in whatever endeavor: progressive overload for building muscle, calorie deceit for losing weight, talking to prospects in building a business, etc.

However I have also seen this stuff taken to the extreme.

Wake up at 4am and immediately start working.

Work for 14+ days and never take a vacation.

And then this as an expression of ego, as the thing that separates the wheat from the chaff, the successes from the failures. 

I am someone who has worked relentlessly, day after day, knocking doors in direct sales, putting in 12+ hours regularly.

I remember having a goal of earning in commissions, not revenue generated, but straight commissions, 6 figures in one month.

I remember achieving it and feeling absolutely nothing.

I worked nonstop for 6 months until my body just basically broke down.

I caught pneumonia and was down for about a week and then went back to work still sick and wound up with walking pneumonia for the next 6 months.

When I look back on it now, the feeling that I was to somehow feel fulfilled or feel whole by making that kind of money seems childish and immature.

Sure I had some fun doing it and certainly grew as a person, but at what cost?

And for what?

I had a similar experience when after my comps defense my advisor walked into the hall and said, “Congregulations, Dr. Gilpin,” and shook my hand.

A feeling of “was that it?” washed over me. 

Maybe its just me, myself, and I as in my own disposition or my personality or my experiences, the culture or family I was raised in, who knows really, but there is a pervasive idea within that if I reach the goal, the achievement, I will feel something different.

However, when we look back to Rodin, there isn’t an emphasis on a destination but on the traveling.

He is placing importance on the work and not the product, and his timeline stretches into the infinite, “one must have patience.”

If we break down the world into causes and conditions then he is only advising we focus on the causes, in the law of sowing and reaping his only interest is in the sowing. 

One of my old mentors in door to door used to always say that we need to fall in love with the sowing.

Meaning that if I fell in love with the process of the job, the money or the reaping, the harvesting will take care of itself.

This is profound wisdom to hear in a door to door sales meeting, and one that is quickly forgotten when one is relentlessly screamed at and told no throughout the day.

There was a book that really helped me in my sales career that I would highly recommend for anyone involved in sales or not called Go For No.

I believe that a 10x ROI on the $300 I spent on the Go For No course is such a radical understatement of its true value in my life.

In that course and book there is a statement that literally changed my sales career: “Failure is the undeniable sign of progress towards a goal.”

It’s easy to put that into a sales equation, of the more no’s I’m able to generate then the more yeses I’ll eventually have.

But it has application far outside of just generating money when selling.

Skill acquisition in whatever endeavor is based around failure and learning, we only get really good at something by being able to be really bad at it for a long time.

This is true whether its learning to shoot a basketball or learn a new language or instrument or of seeing progress in the gym.

In the learning of any skill, the focus on the process over time and the adjustments made from failure creates the ultimate display of success. 

I’m reminded of that oft cited study of the college pottery teacher who divided his class into grading on quality and grading based on quantity.

I learned about it in a book called Art and Fear originally, but I’ve seen it discussed in other contexts.

The pottery teacher divides the class into two groups, one will earn an A if they produce the perfect bowl by the end of the semester and the other will earn an A if they produce a lot of bowls.

You’d think that by having an entire semester to make a perfect bowl you’d be able to create the highest quality.

When in fact those who produced the most amount of bowls had the highest quality.

It is because of the relationship to failure.

One group is encouraged and celebrated in the failure, it is a normal part of the process, where the other group cannot even picture failure as everything depends on it.

With the quantity group only the process was judged, the product came as a byproduct of the process.

And this is the key to avoiding burnout.

The work, the process itself is the goal, and if achievements come or don’t it doesn’t matter.

The process becomes the goal. 

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