Background — locus@control blogpost
Q1: Examine the causes of some exceptional result in a person (not an organization). Which cause gives you more confidence — personal Effort of the individual, talent or external factors like luck, timing, advantageous location (SG/WallSt) or the current favorable competitive landscape?
My answer focuses more on wellness than personal finance or career resilience. For career resilience, the competitive supply/demand/SWOT landscape is the backdrop (and the elephant in the room), so we can only compare effort vs talent against this backdrop.
Luck is, by definition, least dependable least consistent.
— Innate talent? Most people associate innate abilities with long-term reliability but I am skeptical. I don’t think there is any scientific experiment to measure these ill-defined qualities. How about
- creativity in arts or writing
- endurance of heart/lung/muscles
- knee (and other) joint resistance to wear
- aging of bone strength
- aging of memory capacity
- aging flexibility
— Reliability of our own effort is even more controversial. I have confidence in habitual effort of burn rate control (in me and other family members), tech xx (QQ, coding drill etc), but less in tough wellness regimes such as
- starch and fat restriction
- skip dinner
- home yoga
- pull-up
As describe [18] CONTINUOUS coding drill, the effort needs to become a sustainable (ideally lifelong) lifestyle element. Only then will it produce long-term benefit.
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Q2: if talent and effort are both less reliable than needed, then are we bound to lose the exceptional/excellent condition such as the current carefree life? (At the national level, is Singapore bound to lose it’s exceptional position? )
A: as far as my nuclear family is concerned, I am the best reliable pillar one can find, in both effort and talent, and also my judgement, but less reliable in my health.
This Q2 reveals the implicit relativity in reliability of individuals. Every human being is less than 100% reliable, in talent, in effort/motivation — This is beyond debate. However, (one aspect of) one individual can be more reliable than another individual.
Take wellness effort/habit as example. Compared to my age group, if my reliability is at least average, then the good results (above-average wellness condition) is likely to last. I can’t and don’t need to match the wellness effort of a super-healthy individual (who?); I only aim to be better than average. The average guy’s wellness declines at some rate. My decline is likely slower.
Therefore, going beyond wellness, my overall answer to Q1 is — I have more confidence in Effort than talent or external factors. Effort including motivation, habit, a focus on the right priorities.
— Singapore’s position?
PM LHL said “Singapore must guard that reputation zealously.”
My confidence in Singapore is more in the effort, commitment, attitude, trust in government, less in talent or geographic location.
The competitive landscape is the least reliable factor, offers temporary protection and advantage, always shifting and never to be taken for granted.
already moved to dhost.. 