Being persistent

Sound common, right? Although some people refuse to engage in one thing for a long period of time, most people regard persistence as the principle for success. After all, our goal is getting things done despite of difficulties, and this characteristic helps us to do that.

I want to write about this right after posting the first blog about my GRE lessons because this is my second important lesson that l learnt. However, I procrastinated it, I want to make a plan for my next English test, I mentioned about planning in my first lesson, before going on posting another lesson; and also because of my laziness of writing :P

Okie, so what I want to say about this topic. First, I want to tell about some of my failures when learning GRE vocabulary. Failure, again, haha, I love to bite again and again my weakness, that is how I learn.

I started to learn GRE vocabulary 8 months ago, began to beat 3200 Barron flashcards with friends. We had a goal to learn 40 words per day, 40*6 words per week, a big review in each weekend and a great, want-to-die review in each month. I learn words so slow, fortunately, learning in a self-study group with money fine for each forgot words helps me a lot, it pushed me keep going forward. I still remember that I was considered as the sponsor of the group due to the fine I paid :D After there months, we finished learning of Barron word lists for the first time. I estimated that I could remember half of the words, about 1500, and I need time to review the others. Badly, again badly (bad for my GRE), I got a long lasting eye injury later, a vacation to home town, and involved in some emotional stuffs, and then I delayed my reviewing. Saying that “Language, if you don’t use it, you lose it” is absolutely right. When I came back for learning vocabulary in July, I lost my sense of almost the 1500 words I learnt!!!!

So, keeping going forward, hold on to your plan, even if you just can go a little bit forward, it’s a lot better than standing at a place. Stamping at a place means going backward, because the whole worlds are moving forward. Doing nothing, or indulging your distractions, or giving up is even worse than staying at a place, because that means you may even lose what you possess currently or have built previously.

That is my first lesson about persistence. Keeping learning enough numbers of words or amount of works every day is my second experience. Let say I follow a plan of learn 40 words per day. And then in a bad day, bad days certainly happen in our lives; I cannot learn enough words, say 20 in 40 words, “save” 20 to the next day. Hopelessly, I only work though 20 words in the next day. That brings me a burdening goal, 80 words per day, in the following day. As a result, I will never complete my task on time. This kind of procrastination is just like a Domino chain - a falling at one domino destroys the rest of the chain.

When practicing, being patient of improving my skills, and not being depressed with the up/down or unexpected scores is my third lesson with persistence. Another experience about persistence is that people, in their good mood, said that they will write a blog each day, and somewhat so was I, but then only keep that plan in several weeks or even several days. That’s hard to follow that plan, even harder than keeping “spending 15 minutes every day for learning and improving oneself English”. Have you ever heard or tried that advice? Persistence related problems are still discussed time to time: How to keep the routine of learning even when being successful or old? How to keep enthusiasm in doing research? Or why many coders switch to learn business stuffs after only a few years working? blah, blah... That means you and I will still have to deal with this kind of problem more and more. That’s why, being aware of how persistent we are and how to persevere with our planning, in my opinion, is very essential for our life.

"If I had to select one quality, one personal characteristic that I regard as being most highly correlated with success, whatever the field, I would pick the trait of persistence." - Richard DeVos, Amway Co-founder

How to be persistent? I give some tips here, based on my experience and opinion; I hope you will add more:

• Have a suitable plan. Say, you want to learn 40 words a day, if it’s hard for you (time, ability, …) to accomplish it, then start with a smaller goal 20 words a day, then later increase the number of words when your brain uses to learning words. If it’s hard to write a blog per day, start with a goal to write a blog per week.
• Remove your distractions, your temptation to do more interesting things than what you have to do now. When you feel bore, think about the result you will have if you continue to accomplish your task, like the money you will have, the school you will enter, or a great vacation…
• Keep in mind that you have to go on; think about bad things will happen if you give up.
• Learn to balance, between work and life, doing interesting things and doing things that’s less interesting but necessary…
• If you have to do a task everyday, the only way to accomplish it is really loving it and making it become your habit, daily routine (such as learning English, vocabulary via reading, speaking everyday…)

Now, on the other hand, I want to discuss about another issue of persistent: change, which is quite opposite of being persistent. Someone say that “Never Give Up” means N.G.U. (stupid in Vietnamese (: - sound funny, huh?) I heard about it at the first time in a seminar about start-up for tech geeks, the idea told that you should abandon a start-up idea if you still get a lot of difficulties after an amount of time, say 2 years; and start to pursuit another idea. I surprised! Perhaps, until that time I did hear a lot of stories about success which thanks to the trait of persistence.

Others said about “fail early, fail often” motto - the idea of learning from your failure: the more you fail, the more you learn and have potential to be successful; so the earlier, the more often you should fail. They also said that, when you have an idea: move fast, if you get obstacle, then turn or the best entrepreneurs know how to fail fast.

This new idea makes me think, why these successful guys want to fail fast? Why don’t they believe in themselves, their ideas and keep persistent working on it? Why they have to change or turn fast? I'm trying to explain for myself about this dilemma and make it logical for being persistent and changing.

The undefined factor
I think, in this situation, people talk about “change” or “turn” because they are facing the problem relating to finding new things. When you are trying new things, you don’t know what the definitive answer for your problem is. This way may work, may fail also. Thus, when you make error or get obstacle, you should turn and try another idea. Holding on with the old idea likely lead you to an ending deadlock! So, to fail fast, to avoid big failure; and to fail more, to learn more and have more chance to try new opportunities.

But if you have a definitive plan, you know what the award is if you hold on, you should overcome every distractions or temptations to stop. I know there are a lot of obstacles in life but be persistent, no excuses. Reality, there will have undefined factors in your plan; such as you want to learn a subject, however your study method have problems, so “fail early, fail often” with methodology – the undefined factor, but again, keep being consistent the whole goal. Achieve it!