Nothing of worth or weight can be achieved with half a mind, with a faint heart, and with a lame endeavor.
~ Barrow
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Commitment
Commitment
People who are interested in doing something will do it when it’s convenient. People who are committed will do it no matter what.
~ Bob Proctor
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When it’s permanent
Anyone who must in some sense bet on ideas rather than merely commenting on them has similar incentives. Which means anyone who wants such incentives can have them, by turning their comments into bets: if you write about a topic in some fairly durable and public form, you’ll find you worry much more about getting things right than most people would in a casual conversation.
~ Paul Graham from, http://www.paulgraham.com/ecw.html
I’ve previously talked about several reasons why I blog, but this article by Graham reminds me of another: An incentive to be honest.
What I write here is going to hang around for a while. (At least, that’s my plan.) I’m enticed to think a tad more deeply about things before I share them, select a quote or add my commentary. I’m only writing for myself, sure, but I’d like to look back years hence and find on balance that what I wrote was reasonable and useful.
How about you?
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Commitment
If someone were to ask me to identify the single primary quality that an artist or entrepreneur should cultivate in himself, I would say depth of commitment. Because depth of commitment either embodies all the other virtues or establishes the fertile field in which they can take root and grow. Depth of commitment presupposes courage, passion, recklessness, capacity for self-discipline, and the ability to have fun. It implies perseverance.
~ Steven Pressfield
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Commitment doesn’t increase in a smooth fashion. One moment things are as they are, and then you catch a glimpse of how they could be. A glimpse of how they should be… how they must be! When it happens, it’s like cresting a hill after a long walk up a tedious slope. In a flash you forget the thousand gnats and brambles you endured on the climb. There’s nothing for it but to charge down the hill into the valley. This is the valley. This is the solution. This is the way the work should have been done from the beginning. You ignore the shadow which you can clearly see lies at the very bottom of the valley. You ignore the far slope certain you won’t have to climb that hill. Surely nothing better could be found beyond. Surely all the work of all those previous hills was worth the effort to reach this valley.
Right?
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