Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with effort

From Awful to Awesome

divabat — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 15:25:50 -0800

Are there any stories of people notable/talented/successful in their field who started out being completely crap? Most of the "roads to success" stories I've read involve the person having some form of latent talent at the beginning, or actually having talent but not being appreciated for it. But has there been anyone who was or is currently successful at something that started out being really really bad?

A sportsperson who was a total couch potato and could hardly run, or a painter that couldn't grasp technique, or a dancer that kept stumbling. But through effort and persistence they broke through and became a star.

Any stories along those lines?

I'm not just lazy, I swear.

sunshinesky — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 23:24:42 -0800

Currently job-hunting, to no avail. Even McDonald's hasn't called back, wtf? How do I make my husband understand? I am currently getting professional guidance on the resumé front, but it doesn't seem to have helped. Money's tight- how do I handle this situation? The hubby is sure he could go out and "find a job today" , but apparently I'm not so skilled or lucky. He has a career in a field that's not likely to lay him off, but we could still use the income. I can't even get dish-washing jobs- "we don't hire girls for that" is the chorus....

How can I get him to see I'm trying and how can I improve my chances in the shitty-job-market? I'm undereducated in a university-town and have spent my last year very much underemployed. I'm in school part time now, trying to improve future-chances, but it had has no effect but negative on the current situation... Help?

Helping a kid deal with losing...

unixrat — Fri, 23 May 2008 08:25:23 -0800

What to do (if anything) about a kid (Kindergarten) who cannot deal with failure/losing? Right, so school 'Spring' concert last night, each grade stands up front as a group and sings 3-4 simple songs. Three songs in, I can see our daughter forget some of the words to a song, look a little nervous, burst into tears, and walk off during the song. She's inconsolable, wouldn't sit with her class ("Embarrassed"), wouldn't rejoin her class for the whole school sing at the end, nothing.

Not the first time this sort of thing has happened. Our parent-teacher meetings have been glowing - great kid, good worker, friendly, but always with the 'She will avoid doing something if she thinks she'll get it wrong'. We've run into it at home - she won't guess at things, won't try new games without an example or demonstration, that sort of thing. Once you do that, she's a-ok, but she'll never attack it on her own.

We don't punish mistakes, we're very supportive, and she's certainly seen us make our share of mistakes. I play sports and she's seen my softball team get whipped regularly. :) Hasn't seemed to help though. Her response is avoidance and tears, not anger or lashing out or anything.

Okay, crux of the issue: The wife and I got into a (private - after the kid had gone to bed) fight last night over what to do - the wife wants "Professional Help" and I wanted to do nothing - she's six.

The rub is that this is my daughter has picked up a miniature version of my wife's personality, pretty much since birth. My wife is almost exactly like this - she won't play on our co-ed softball team because she's "no good", I had to play with a neighbor's wife during the neighborhood Best Ball golf game because she "doesn't know how to golf", etc., etc. Neither my wife nor my daughter will accept the rationale that "it's only for fun and no one cares."

Apparently this has caused my wife much pain during her life - missing out on things, stress, and so on, and she wants to try and help our daughter avoid the same problems. The problem I have is that I am mystified by these actions. The solution (to me) with not knowing how to play softball is... to play softball. Same with golf. And singing. And life.

So, Mefi, have you any advice? Does my six year old need some sort of professional help? Is there some way we can help her deal with this on our own? My guidance of "Just Do It" isn't working - help!

Srsly, I can't be arsed.

droplet — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 10:54:04 -0800

How to encourage myself to put forth the effort to actually live a life? I'm living as a physically and intellectually mature 3-year old.

I have a job. I sleep. I eat. I read. I bathe and brush my teeth twice a day. But for things I claim that I really want to do, such as have good friends, become fit, be in a romantic relationship, make films / comedy, live in London, sing in a band (even for fun), invest in real savings for my future and not merely some sluggish 401k, I don't make any effort to meet any goal. I don't make goals, rather. 99% of what I have in my life right now didn't take much effort to get. The only things I've actually worked hard on for my own benefit was physically escaping my abusers at 18 and getting an internship my junior year of uni. For the life of me, I can't remember how it felt to want those two things so badly that I did what I had to do. With regard to the abuse, I claim to want to get over what happened, but only just figured out that I've shut down all real communication with my therapist and have used my 40 minutes every week to harangue the people who hurt me. I have to force myself to go to therapy! I don't even make an effort to do the things I claim to enjoy, like music or movies or cooking or travel. I've taken classes in things, but stopped when they required real commitment, emotional or otherwise. I could say that about my relationships as well. I have a job. I sleep. I eat. I read.

What's frightening me is that deep down, it feels like a large part of me doesn't want to do anything, even something as simple as doing the laundry. Some of these things I do, but there's no sense of, "It has to be done to get what you want and that's OK." I get upset that I actually have to clean my apartment or do laundry. It's been this way at least since 5th grade. I don't want to work, even at the job that's currently paying my bills. I don't want to talk to people and find it a hassle to have to return phone calls and emails, so never mind true intimacy with a friend or partner - that's too much work. I don't want to try. Yet, I'm angry at myself for sitting around on my ass just reading , just eating, envying Bob Odenkirk or the woman at my job who's happily married to a nice man. I'm angry at myself for the little kid inside who's all, "DON'T WANNA! GIMME!", while knowing logically that the world owes me nothing, nothing will be handed to me and that no one is truly going to care about me except me, and no one's going to give a damn anyway if I don't.

In looking to be honest with myself, I've been asking: Is my current routine all I truly want or am capable of? Why am I unwilling to accept risk? Why won't I challenge myself? Why am I unwilling to do the work it takes to make my life better? Am I one of life's cowards? If so, can I learn to make peace with this? I feel frozen, and the answers haven't been forthcoming.

I want to know if any MeFites have gone through this issue and what they've done about it.

Working 9 to 9.05, what a way to make a living.

Anonymous — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 10:57:48 -0800

I find it nearly impossible to do any real work, unless I happen to feel like it. But I don't want to end up drifting through life, settling for mediocrity. If you managed to get your act together and are now able work hard on things you aren't interested in, as we all should be able to do from time to time, then my question is: how did you do it? I'll spare you the David Copperfield crap and cut to the chase. I cruised through school, scraped A grades in all my exams, and got into Oxford. Now I'm there, I've done the bare minimum of work necessary to save face, and I'm failing the exams I'm sitting this week. My university doesn't do resits, or retaken years, or subject changes, so this means dropping ("flunking"?) out. Of course being a college dropout doesn't of itself destine one to failure, but a complete lack of willpower to do the smallest morsel of uninteresting work does.

I'm not just asking how to avoid procrastination, since the answers to that generally just involve raising the barriers to time-wasting. That's all well and good, but things like GTD aren't an answer to the fundamental problem of a lack of motivation in something.

Answers of the form, "I thought I was going to fail my exams but then I didn't! Perhaps you won't either!" will receive no credit.

How do I motivate myself to be a good cog in the machine?

croutonsupafreak — Mon, 21 May 2007 10:00:37 -0800

How do I motivate myself at work now that I'm at a much bigger employer and my contributions to the organization aren't that important anymore? "Just do it" is the WRONG answer. So it GTD. I need a new way of thinking about the world, or a life coach, or something. At the start of my career, I had jobs at small organizations where the amount of effort I put in had a visible effect on the quality of the product we put out. I worked long, hard hours, and was passionate about my field. I'm still proud of the contributions I made, and of my rapid career rise. (I'm in a field where people rise by moving to larger, more prestigious, employers.)

About a year ago, I was hired by a fairly large employer, where my contributions are much less significant. I'm doing about 25 percent as much work as I'd done in the past, and for that I get praise, good performance reviews, and raises. Meanwhile, I spend most of my on-the-job time feeling bored and surfing the web.

It doesn't have to be this way! If I contributed more, my extra efforts would be welcomed. I could do more of the small projects I've always done, and I could even do some big projects I've always dreamed of doing. I finally have the time and resources to make it happen. But now that I'm such a small cog in the machine, now that even full-out effort makes relatively little difference to the organization as a whole, I can't seem to make myself work any harder.

I've read through a lot of "how to get motivated" threads here. I've even posted my own questions on the subject from time to time. I don't think a system that I come up with on my own, a kick by myself to my own pants, is going to help. I need some kind of outside intervention or a new paradigm or something.

I feel lost. I'm not happy being so bored at work, but I don't get much satisfaction out of trying to work harder, either. What should I do?

Focus and sport

glip — Fri, 18 May 2007 08:32:48 -0800

Personal drive and sports. I need to learn to push myself more. So, I've started playing rugby again, and I'm a lot better shape than I was when I played before. I'm also generally more confident and able to handle the ball much better. The coaches are really impressed so far, but I am having trouble pushing myself to run faster and hit harder, and so on.

I know I can do better, but I just can't seem to make the connection from my brain to my legs to get the results I want.

I suppose I'm just looking to try and focus, or find the fire within, if you will. I'd appreciate any insight, not just rugby specific stuff. Thanks!

How long should writing a paper take, on average?

b33j — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 21:20:33 -0800

What's a reasonable amount of time for me to schedule for a written university assignment, including library research, online journal search, draft and actual writing, to get a better than pass mark? I'm a full-time university mature-age student, but I'm studying from a distance, so my access to lecturers and other students is minimal. The last two semesters I achieved a perfect GPA, but I've since doubled my study load and I'm finding my current methods aren't working so well for me. So what I want to know is including research time, how long would writing a 1500 word essay take you? Is there a particular way that you structure your time, like, if you don't have all the resources you want after looking for X time, too bad?

Study guides I've read seem to indicate that the percentage the assignment is worth of your final mark gives you an estimated time to commence (ie 40% start 4 weeks before it's due, 10% write it in the week it's due), but they don't indicate how much time per week to spend on it.

I think I'm ready to not aim for that perfect GPA anymore, so you can factor that into what's a reasonable amount of time, if you like.

At this point of my current assignment, I"m only at 750 words, and I've already invested 14 hours.

What's a good way of dealing with long-term goals?

gregb1007 — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 17:57:36 -0800

What's a good way of dealing with long-term goals? I ask the question about how to deal with long-term goals because it's a tricky issue. If you are investing yourself into accomplishing something that will take quite a bit of time, it's very easy to feel discouraged because it seems like you are putting in a lot of energy into doing something that will bring you benefits at a later point in time. It feels like cooking a meal that you won't get to eat until days later. What's a good way of working towards long-term goals without feeling frustrated and believing yourself to be wasting your time because the fruit of your efforts is so far away.