Perseverance is over-rated

Perseverance is overrated. Yes, I said it. Bring out the pitchforks and lay out the #hustle-on hashtags. I’ll ‘persevere’ through the ordeal and explain my reasoning. This age is filled with everything & everyone on social media, unlike the one in my header, urging one to go onto the end of the earth until you’ve achieved everything you want to. I’m going to try and establish that this is more likely than not a path to unhappiness than one of accomplishments.

It’s ironic that I’m listening to ‘Don’t stop till you get enough’ as I pen this post. I was first introduced to the song watching one of my top favorite comedy movies ever, “Rush Hour” where James Carter does a tremendous job singing the karaoke version of this song. But for those you’ve seen the movie James’s approach to side-step persevering yielding in some amazing results and fantastic laughs.

This though was seeded by Malcomm Gladwell’s Elite Institution Cognitive Disorder talk which theorizes that to do well especially in the harder aspects of life you’ll be better off in a smaller pond (to be fine tuned…)

Morris Philip, a New Yorker, who didn’t want to ‘persevere’ drinking coffee out of cups in cafes for the rest of his life but rather wanted to have a cup of joe in the subway, came up with the humble coffee-cup lid.

Of course I’m not advocating the reverse, viz. raise a stink about everything/ every system you interact with and keep trying to undo every whiff of inconvenience .

Same things with the phones before iPhones. We could’ve persevered through the “dumb smart-phones”, but 2 teams at apple lead by the visionary persevered to prevent us the perseveration of the abomination of pre-iPhone smart phones.

It’s ironic when you think about it. You have to persevere to break away from having to persevere. But that’s actually true about a lot of things in life. You have to experience heartbreak to appreciate love. You have to appreciate suffering to feel pain.

I’ll lead with a personal example. Early December of 2019, I slipped down the stairs and injured my ankle (fracture + sprain). After the initial disheartenment, I resolved to ‘persevere’ through it and feel positive about it.

Conclusion : If deep down you feel something is too hard, and there must be an easier/better way, find one rather than persevere through it.

Disclaimer:- This post was written to meet my new year’s resolution quota. And while it’s not up-to the standards I’d like, I’m happy that I’m ‘persevering’ for my resolutions (lol).