Flaming enthusiasm, backed up by horse sense and persistence, is the quality that most frequently makes for success.
— Dale Carnegie
Perseverance is an excellent quality to have, especially as an entrepreneur. Steve Jobs once said, “I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure Perseverance”. There is a saying that goes; if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Another word for perseverance is Fortitude, which means having the strength to overcome obstacles to continue to perform. But very often, we can persevere in the wrong things. By this, I mean that keeping on trying something doesn’t necessarily mean that what we are trying is the right thing to do. Maybe we should be trying something else. Perseverance doesn’t mean continuing to do stuff that doesn’t work, it just means continuing in the face of adversity.
Discipline and talent are important when it comes to succeeding in our careers. The concept of “The 10-year rule” suggests that those who are top in their fields will have spent ten years working full-time and being highly invested in their chosen practice. Bloom (1985) studied top scholars, students, and athletes and his research discovered them to not only possess talent, but also to be incredibly self-disciplined in their field of expertise. Research by Duckworth and Seligman (2005, 2006) discovered that it was self-discipline that mattered more than intelligence when it came to educational success and final grade achievements. Duckworth et al. (2007) also concluded that it was grit, and a dedicated pursuit of a long-term goal that was the only thing that separated talented people. They concluded that it was an individual’s perseverance of effort, which develops the fortitude required to overcome obstacles or challenges in order to realize the achievement of the goal they pursued.
When to Persevere and When to Quit
It’s hard to admit you have made a mistake. In fact, it is hard to recognize you have made a mistake; after all, no one sets off with the intention of doing the wrong thing. We all do the things that we think are right. It’s just that, as we implement our plans, sometimes it turns out that what we thought was right isn’t right after all. We’ve all heard the saying “If you keep doing the same thing, you’ll always get the same results”. So, what is it, give up or persevere? Personally, I think it means keep going, don’t change your attitude, but change what you are doing. The other dilemma is when something was working, and then suddenly it isn’t working anymore. However, sometimes you are doing the right thing, and it is a case of trying again and getting it right next time. But this then presents the challenge of us knowing what to try again, and what to not try again. We somehow have to develop an internal compass that indicates when you should adjust your approach and where should you plough on knowing that if you keep doing the right things it will succeed eventually. Since most of us don’t all have a crystal ball to tell us whether what we are doing will deliver fruit in the future, we have to make a judgment call.
Evaluating Outcomes
Evaluation is an overused concept and an underused practice. But knowing what we need to continue with and what to discard comes from assessing outcomes and being honest in that assessment. My son has Dyslexic Dysgraphia, which means he struggles with visualizing words and, therefore, has to code every word he learns to spell. When he was younger, he was getting words from school to learn to spell, and every week I would test him, getting him to write the word he got wrong ten times, then tested him again. And every week, he aced his spelling tests. The issue was that he had succeeded in passing his spelling tests, but he hadn’t learned how to spell, so once the test was over, the information leaked from his memory. The process of reading and writing has resulted in many false starts and we tried a number of different methods over the years. Eventually, having tried to teach him to succeed and failing, we turned to a professional and my son now attends additional literacy lessons with a specialist teacher. It seems to be working.
When it comes to something like reading and writing, the outcomes are easy to evaluate. Either you can, or you can’t. For other things, measuring success is slightly more ethereal. But using the success measures that you developed in Manage your Career Tool #7, you can decide whether what you are doing is moving you toward that goal, or away from it. You can evaluate whether you should persevere with what you are doing and understand what needs to change, if success remains out of reach. Whatever the choices are that you make, it is important that you are disciplined in continuing to pursue your goal. They say insanity is to keep doing the same things and expecting different results. If your goal, your purpose, is worth pursuing, don’t give up; persist in following the vision you have set yourself. Continue trying, but evaluate the outcome of you efforts. If the outcome of the action you have taken doesn’t help you to move closer to your goal, then change what you are doing. It isn’t about changing direction, it’s about changing tactics.
Don’t give up on dreams that are worthwhile, just give up on the stuff that isn’t helping you get there!
Manage Your Career Tool #15 – Evaluation to Create Forward Movement
Giving up on an activity you are doing to get to the goal because it isn’t working is different from giving up on the goal itself. If you evaluate the outcomes of your activity against your success measures and find that they are not helping you to achieve what you desire, then stop and plan your next move.
Below are some questions to help you evaluate where you are in achieving your success and help you create forward movement:
- What is taking shape?
- What is emerging from your actions and activities?
- What has challenged you?
- What is missing so far? What are you not seeing? What do you need more clarity about?
- What has been your major learning, insight, or discovery so far?
- What’s the next level of thinking we need to do?
- What is the one thing that hasn’t yet been said or done to reach the next level? What would that be?
- What would it take to create change in your current situation?
- What could happen that would enable you to achieve your success measure and feel fully engaged and energized about your situation?
- What’s possible here and who cares?
- If your success was completely guaranteed what bold steps would you choose?
- What support do you need to take the next steps?
- What conversation, if begun today could create new possibilities for the future?
It is recommended that you make evaluation of outcomes part of your career-planning process. This means setting time aside at regular intervals (at least once every three months) to review progress, check outcomes, and decide what next steps need to be taken to move things forward.