Results Are Rewarded Efforts Are Not Quotes

The elegance under pressure is the result of fearlessness.

When efforts that are wisely executed, the situation and condition don't affect the performance.

The essence of Relationship Selling is when we convert a customer into a client and the seller gains the status of a supplier. It is really a process of forming a business partnership, where each partner not only transacts business but is interdependent in a mutually beneficial relationship, with a common growth objective. Sales can be:    B2B (Business to Business)  B2C (Business to Consumer)  Direct or indirect selling

Relationship Selling implies long-term commitment, common goals, mutual respect, ongoing trust and cooperation. Informal relationships, many a time, get converted into formal alliances also, helping joint-marketing and co-branding. Establishing a relationship is a series of steps, by and large in sequence only. Jumping steps or changing the sequence could be counterproductive.

Some people make friends by wining and dining people with the sole objective of doing business with them. Once the usefulness goes, the friendship also goes. It is unfortunate because it is very shortsighted and insincere. One should keep in mind that just because a person is a friend it does not mean they are under an obligation to buy from you. In my career, I have acquired clients professionally and built friendships later, versus making friends with the intention of doing business. Sooner or later, people uncover the ulterior motive.

THE DIFFERENCE If I buy a photocopier from you, I have made a transaction and am considered a customer. However, if I start buying all my office equipment from you, I have developed a relationship and have become a client. I have developed a relationship because of which I (the client) keep buying more and more. That’s the difference between transactional and relationship selling. A salesperson’s philosophy is reflected in his behavior and

Results, not effort, is the name of the game. You are rewarded in life by the results you produce, not the effort and time you put in.

We have only minimal control over the rewards for our work and effort—other people’s validation, recognition, rewards. So what are we going to do? Not be kind, not work hard, not produce, because there is a chance it wouldn’t be reciprocated? C’mon. Think of all the activists who will find that they can only advance their cause so far. The leaders who are assassinated before their work is done. The inventors whose ideas languish “ahead of their time.” According to society’s main metrics, these people were not rewarded for their work. Should they have not done it? Yet in ego, every one of us has considered doing precisely that. If that is your attitude, how do you intend to endure tough times? What if you’re ahead of the times? What if the market favors some bogus trend? What if your boss or your clients don’t understand? It’s far better when doing good work is sufficient. In other words, the less attached we are to outcomes the better. When fulfilling our own standards is what fills us with pride and self-respect. When the effort—not the results, good or bad—is enough. With ego, this is not nearly sufficient. No, we need to be recognized. We need to be compensated. Especially problematic is the fact that, often, we get that. We are praised, we are paid, and we start to assume that the two things always go together. The “expectation hangover” inevitably ensues.

We have only minimal control over the rewards for our work and effort - other people’s validation, recognition, rewards. It’s far better when doing the work itself is sufficient. When fulfilling our own internal standards is what fills us with pride and self-respect. The less attached we are to the outcomes, the better. Our ego wants recognition & compensation. We have expectations. Let the effort, not the results be enough. Maybe your parents/kids/partner/etc won’t be impressed. We can’t let THAT be what motivates us. We can change the definition of success to: ‘peace of mind, which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to do your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.’ With this definition we decide not to let externals determine if something is worth doing. It’s on us.

rewarding, quality time. How much of one’s life was snatched away to simply vanish as a result of this (most likely) pointless movement from point A to point B? And how much did this effort exhaust people, and wear them down?

The author compares the struggles of Martin Luther with the prevailing doctrine that a little genuine effort on our part results in a disproportionate reward of God's righteousness with a blind man who would be given $1 million – if only he could see.

Almost by force of habit, successful people simply do more. As a result, they experience not only greater financial rewards for their extra efforts but also a personal transformation, becoming more self-confident, more self-reliant, and more influential with those around them.

The 80/20 Principle asserts that a minority of causes, inputs, or effort usually lead to a majority of the results, outputs, or rewards. Taken literally, this means that, for example, 80 percent of what you achieve in your job comes from 20 percent of the time spent. Thus for all practical purposes, four-fifths of the effort—a dominant part of it—is largely irrelevant.

...but if the result of my efforts and those of others is that man becomes a robot, created and controlled by a science of his own making, then I am very unhappy indeed. If the good life of the future consists in so conditioning individuals through the control of their environment, and through the control of the rewards they receive, that they will be inexorably productive, well-behaved, happy or whatever, then I want none of it. To me this is a pseudo-form of the good life which includes everything save that what makes it good.

Working hard is important. But more effort does not necessarily yield more results. “Less but better” does. Ferran Adrià, arguably the world’s greatest chef, who has led El Bulli to become the world’s most famous restaurant, epitomizes the principle of “less but better” in at least two ways. First, his specialty is reducing traditional dishes to their absolute essence and then re-imagining them in ways people have never thought of before. Second, while El Bulli has somewhere in the range of 2 million requests for dinner reservations each year, it serves only fifty people per night and closes for six months of the year. In fact, at the time of writing, Ferran had stopped serving food altogether and had instead turned El Bulli into a full-time food laboratory of sorts where he was continuing to pursue nothing but the essence of his craft.1 Getting used to the idea of “less but better” may prove harder than it sounds, especially when we have been rewarded in the past for doing more … and more and more. Yet at a certain point, more effort causes our progress to plateau and even stall. It’s true that the idea of a direct correlation between results and effort is appealing. It seems fair. Yet research across many fields paints a very different picture. Most people have heard of the “Pareto Principle,” the idea, introduced as far back as the 1790s by Vilfredo Pareto, that 20 percent of our efforts produce 80 percent of results. Much later, in 1951, in his Quality-Control Handbook, Joseph Moses Juran, one of the fathers of the quality movement, expanded on this idea and called it “the Law of the Vital Few.”2 His observation was that you could massively improve the quality of a product by resolving a tiny fraction of the problems. He found a willing test audience for this idea in Japan, which at the time had developed a rather poor reputation for producing low-cost, low-quality goods. By adopting a process in which a high percentage of effort and attention was channeled toward improving just those few things that were truly vital, he made the phrase “made in Japan” take on a totally new meaning. And gradually, the quality revolution led to Japan’s rise as a global economic power.3

Authentic self-worth comes from an internal value system, not from simple achievement. Self-worth comes from the positive results of your effort. You may have learned something about yourself or gained the experiential confidence to attempt more difficult challenges. These effects are genuinely valuable. The achievement itself, however, is no reason for an elevated sense of self-worth. You might not have learned anything from your “success,” or you could have learned something equally valuable by not meeting your objective. Here’s the complete scenario for performance-oriented self-worth: If you have a string of weak performances, you’ll be down on yourself in general, creating a destructive downward spiral. If you climb well half the time, you’ll be the passive recipient of reward half the time, and of punishment the other half. If you manage to climb well all the time, you’ll get the dubious reward of becoming an egomaniac with a precarious self-image, destined for a crash. You can look forward to an old age spent in endless rehash of past days of glory. If you think about it, no matter how well you climb, tangling up your self-worth with your performance is a lose-lose situation.

HAPPINESS: "Flourishing is a fact, not a feeling. We flourish when we grow and thrive. We flourish when we exercise our powers. We flourish when we become what we are capable of becoming...Flourishing is rooted in action..."happiness is a kind of working of the soul in the way of perfect excellence"...a flourishing life is a life lived along lines of excellence...Flourishing is a condition that is created by the choices we make in the world we live in...Flourishing is not a virtue, but a condition; not a character trait, but a result. We need virtue to flourish, but virtue isn't enough. To create a flourishing life, we need both virtue and the conditions in which virtue can flourish...Resilience is a virtue required for flourishing, bur being resilient will not guarantee that we will flourish. Unfairness, injustice, and bad fortune will snuff our promising lives. Unasked-for pain will still come our way...We can build resilience and shape the world we live in. We can't rebuild the world...three primary kinds of happiness: the happiness of pleasure, the happiness of grace, and happiness of excellence...people who are flourishing usually have all three kinds of happiness in their lives...Aristotle understood: pushing ourselves to grow, to get better, to dive deeper is at the heart of happiness...This is the happiness that goes hand in hand with excellence, with pursuing worthy goals, with growing mastery...It is about the exercise of powers. The most common mistake people make in thinking about the happiness of excellence is to focus on moments of achievement. They imagine the mountain climber on the summit. That's part of the happiness of excellence, and a very real part. What counts more, though, is not the happiness of being there, but the happiness of getting there. A mountain climber heads for the summit, and joy meets her along the way. You head for the bottom of the ocean, and joy meets you on the way down...you create joy along the way...the concept of flow, the kind of happiness that comes when we lose ourselves through complete absorption in a rewarding task...the idea of flow..."Contrary to what we usually believe, moments like these, the best moments in our lives, are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times...The best moments usually occur when a person's body or mind is stretched to its limit in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile."...Joy, like sweat, is usually a byproduct of your activity, not your aim...A focus on happiness will not lead to excellence. A focus on excellence will, over time, lead to happiness. The pursuit of excellence leads to growth, mastery, and achievement. None of these are sufficient for happiness, yet all of them are necessary...the pull of purpose, the desire to feel "needed in this world" - however we fulfill that desire - is a very powerful force in a human life...recognize that the drive to live well and purposefully isn't some grim, ugly, teeth-gritting duty. On the contrary: "it's a very good feeling." It is really is happiness...Pleasures can never make up for an absence of purposeful work and meaningful relationships. Pleasures will never make you whole...Real happiness comes from working together, hurting together, fighting together, surviving together, mourning together. It is the essence of the happiness of excellence...The happiness of pleasure can't provide purpose; it can't substitute for the happiness of excellence. The challenge for the veteran - and for anyone suddenly deprived of purpose - is not simple to overcome trauma, but to rebuild meaning. The only way out is through suffering to strength. Through hardship to healing. And the longer we wait, the less life we have to live...We are meant to have worthy work to do. If we aren't allowed to struggle for something worthwhile, we'll never grow in resilience, and we'll never experience complete happiness.

When we ingest a drug or a drink, our system instantly floods with an absurd amount of dopamine — from two to ten times the natural amount — causing an intense uprush of pleasure and focus, essentially shortcutting the brain’s natural reward system. That feels really, really good. Then a couple of things happen. The hippocampus — the part of the brain responsible for creating memories — lays down “tracks” or “records” of this rapid sense of satisfaction. So essentially the brain remembers: I can cut straight to the good feelings with this simple little thing. Next, the amygdala, which is responsible for emotions and survival instincts, creates a conditioned response to the stimulus (for me, it’s alcohol; for you, it’s whatever your “thing” is), and as a result, the brain produces less dopamine or even in severe cases eliminates dopamine receptors in an effort to maintain balance, causing the activity that once used to be the fast track to pleasure to become less and less pleasurable over time. Now, repeat this cycle a few thousand times, and the brain’s reward and learning functions change significantly. The actual pleasure associated with the behavior subsides, yet the memory of the desired effect and the need to re-create it (the wanting) persists. The normal machinery of motivation no longer functions rationally. “You were literally out of your mind,” she said.

Westerners, not just Lincoln Steffens. It took in the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States. It even took in the Soviet Union’s own leaders, such as Nikita Khrushchev, who famously boasted in a speech to Western diplomats in 1956 that “we will bury you [the West].” As late as 1977, a leading academic textbook by an English economist argued that Soviet-style economies were superior to capitalist ones in terms of economic growth, providing full employment and price stability and even in producing people with altruistic motivation. Poor old Western capitalism did better only at providing political freedom. Indeed, the most widely used university textbook in economics, written by Nobel Prize–winner Paul Samuelson, repeatedly predicted the coming economic dominance of the Soviet Union. In the 1961 edition, Samuelson predicted that Soviet national income would overtake that of the United States possibly by 1984, but probably by 1997. In the 1980 edition there was little change in the analysis, though the two dates were delayed to 2002 and 2012. Though the policies of Stalin and subsequent Soviet leaders could produce rapid economic growth, they could not do so in a sustained way. By the 1970s, economic growth had all but stopped. The most important lesson is that extractive institutions cannot generate sustained technological change for two reasons: the lack of economic incentives and resistance by the elites. In addition, once all the very inefficiently used resources had been reallocated to industry, there were few economic gains to be had by fiat. Then the Soviet system hit a roadblock, with lack of innovation and poor economic incentives preventing any further progress. The only area in which the Soviets did manage to sustain some innovation was through enormous efforts in military and aerospace technology. As a result they managed to put the first dog, Leika, and the first man, Yuri Gagarin, in space. They also left the world the AK-47 as one of their legacies. Gosplan was the supposedly all-powerful planning agency in charge of the central planning of the Soviet economy. One of the benefits of the sequence of five-year plans written and administered by Gosplan was supposed to have been the long time horizon necessary for rational investment and innovation. In reality, what got implemented in Soviet industry had little to do with the five-year plans, which were frequently revised and rewritten or simply ignored. The development of industry took place on the basis of commands by Stalin and the Politburo, who changed their minds frequently and often completely revised their previous decisions. All plans were labeled “draft” or “preliminary.” Only one copy of a plan labeled “final”—that for light industry in 1939—has ever come to light. Stalin himself said in 1937 that “only bureaucrats can think that planning work ends with the creation of the plan. The creation of the plan is just the beginning. The real direction of the plan develops only after the putting together of the plan.” Stalin wanted to maximize his discretion to reward people or groups who were politically loyal, and punish those who were not. As for Gosplan, its main role was to provide Stalin with information so he could better monitor his friends and enemies. It actually tried to avoid making decisions. If you made a decision that turned

CELEBRATE YOUR SUCCESS The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate. —Oprah Winfrey How do you know if your scrappy effort was successful? There’s positive movement—cause to celebrate. It either moves your intention forward or you come closer to achieving your goal. You will know it worked because you feel the win, big or small. I’m a huge believer in champagne moments (or celebratory beer, ice cream, night on the town, whatever your preference). You have to celebrate! This journey is supposed to be fun. Stop and take the time to recognize and enjoy the big wins, little wins, and everything in between. Research shows there is bonus value to celebrating. In her article “Getting Results Through Others,” Loraine Kasprzak writes, quoting her coauthor Jean Oursler, “When others have worked hard to achieve the desired results, celebrate it! ‘It’s important to celebrate because our brains need a memorable reference point—also called a reward—to make the whole journey worthwhile.’” Celebrating creates a positive benchmark in your brain for future reference. According to an article in the Journal of Staff Development by Richard DuFour: Ritual and ceremony help us experience the unseen webs of significance that tie a community together. There may be grand ceremonies for special occasions, but organizations [and individuals] also need simple rituals that infuse meaning and purpose into daily routine. Without ritual and ceremony, transitions become incomplete, a clutter of comings and goings. Life becomes an endless set of Wednesdays. An endless set of Wednesdays? Yuck. Who needs that? Whether you are an individual, a small team, or a large organization, celebrate your scrappy wins as part of the experience and enjoy the ride.

Growth was so rapid that it took in generations of Westerners, not just Lincoln Steffens. It took in the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States. It even took in the Soviet Union’s own leaders, such as Nikita Khrushchev, who famously boasted in a speech to Western diplomats in 1956 that “we will bury you [the West].” As late as 1977, a leading academic textbook by an English economist argued that Soviet-style economies were superior to capitalist ones in terms of economic growth, providing full employment and price stability and even in producing people with altruistic motivation. Poor old Western capitalism did better only at providing political freedom. Indeed, the most widely used university textbook in economics, written by Nobel Prize–winner Paul Samuelson, repeatedly predicted the coming economic dominance of the Soviet Union. In the 1961 edition, Samuelson predicted that Soviet national income would overtake that of the United States possibly by 1984, but probably by 1997. In the 1980 edition there was little change in the analysis, though the two dates were delayed to 2002 and 2012. Though the policies of Stalin and subsequent Soviet leaders could produce rapid economic growth, they could not do so in a sustained way. By the 1970s, economic growth had all but stopped. The most important lesson is that extractive institutions cannot generate sustained technological change for two reasons: the lack of economic incentives and resistance by the elites. In addition, once all the very inefficiently used resources had been reallocated to industry, there were few economic gains to be had by fiat. Then the Soviet system hit a roadblock, with lack of innovation and poor economic incentives preventing any further progress. The only area in which the Soviets did manage to sustain some innovation was through enormous efforts in military and aerospace technology. As a result they managed to put the first dog, Leika, and the first man, Yuri Gagarin, in space. They also left the world the AK-47 as one of their legacies. Gosplan was the supposedly all-powerful planning agency in charge of the central planning of the Soviet economy. One of the benefits of the sequence of five-year plans written and administered by Gosplan was supposed to have been the long time horizon necessary for rational investment and innovation. In reality, what got implemented in Soviet industry had little to do with the five-year plans, which were frequently revised and rewritten or simply ignored. The development of industry took place on the basis of commands by Stalin and the Politburo, who changed their minds frequently and often completely revised their previous decisions. All plans were labeled “draft” or “preliminary.” Only one copy of a plan labeled “final”—that for light industry in 1939—has ever come to light. Stalin himself said in 1937 that “only bureaucrats can think that planning work ends with the creation of the plan. The creation of the plan is just the beginning. The real direction of the plan develops only after the putting together of the plan.” Stalin wanted to maximize his discretion to reward people or groups who were politically loyal, and punish those who were not. As for Gosplan, its main role was to provide Stalin with information so he could better monitor his friends and enemies. It actually tried to avoid making decisions. If you made a decision that turned out badly, you might get shot. Better to avoid all responsibility. An example of what could happen

Under these circumstances the most anodyne book was a source of danger from the simple fact that love was alluded to, and woman depicted as an attractive creature; and this was enough to account for all—for the inherent ignorance of Catholics, since it was proclaimed as the preventive cure for temptations—for the instinctive horror of art, since to these craven souls every written and studied work was in its nature a vehicle of sin and an incitement to fall. Would it not really be far more sensible and judicious to open the windows, to air the rooms, to treat these souls as manly beings, to teach them not to be so much afraid of their own flesh, to inculcate the firmness and courage needed for resistance? For really it is rather like a dog which barks at your heels and snaps at your legs if you are afraid of him, but who beats a retreat if you turn on him boldly and drive him off. The fact remains that these schemes of education have resulted, on the one hand, in the triumph of the flesh in the greater number of men who have been thus brought up and then thrown into a worldly life, and on the other, in a wide diffusion of folly and fear, an abandonment of the possessions of the intellect and the capitulation of the Catholic army surrendering without a blow to the inroads of profane literature, which takes possession of territory that it has not even had the trouble of conquering. This really was madness! The Church had created art, had cherished it for centuries; and now by the effeteness of her sons she was cast into a corner. All the great movements of our day, one after the other—romanticism, naturalism—had been effected independently of her, or even against her will. If a book were not restricted to the simplest tales, or pleasing fiction ending in virtue rewarded and vice punished, that was enough; the propriety of beadledom was at once ready to bray. As soon as the most modern form of art, the most malleable and the broadest—the Novel—touched on scenes of real life, depicted passion, became a psychological study, an effort of analysis, the army of bigots fell back all along the line. The Catholic force, which might have been thought better prepared than any others to contest the ground which theology had long since explored, retired in good order, satisfied to cover its retreat by firing from a safe distance, with its old-fashioned match-lock blunderbusses, on works it had neither inspired nor written. The Church party, centuries behind the time, and having made no attempt to follow the evolution of style in the course of ages, now turned to the rustic who can scarcely read; it did not understand more than half of the words used by modern writers, and had become, it must be said, a camp of the illiterate. Incapable of distinguishing the good from the bad, it included in one condemnation the filth of pornography and real works of art; in short, it ended by emitting such folly and talking such preposterous nonsense, that it fell into utter discredit and ceased to count at all. And it would have been so easy for it to work on a little way, to try to keep up with the times, and to understand, to convince itself whether in any given work the author was writing up the Flesh, glorifying it, praising it, and nothing more, or whether, on the contrary, he depicted it merely to buffet it—hating it. And, again, it would have done well to convince itself that there is a chaste as well as a prurient nude, and that it should not cry shame on every picture in which the nude is shown. Above all, it ought to have recognized that vices may well be depicted and studied with a view to exciting disgust of them and showing their horrors.

The end of the war will see the final ruin of the Jew. The Jew is the incarnation of egoism. And their egoism goes so far that they're not even capable of risking their lives for the defence of their most vital interests. The Jew totally lacks any interest in things of the spirit. If he has pretended in Germany to have a bent for literature and the arts, that's only out of snobbery, or from a liking for speculation. He has no feeling for art, and no sensibility. Except in the regions where they live in groups, the Jews are said to have reached a very high cultural level! Take Nuremberg, for example: for four hundred years—that is to say, until 1838—it hadn't a single Jew in its population. Result: a situation in the first rank of German cultural life. Put the Jews all together: by the end of three hundred years, they'll have devoured one another. Where we have a philosopher, they have a Talmudistic pettifogger. What for us is an attempt to get to the bottom of things and express the inexpressible, becomes for the Jew a pretext for verbal juggleries. His only talent is for masticating ideas so as to disguise his thought. He has observed that the Aryan is stupid to the point of accepting anything in matters of religion, as soon as the idea of God is recognised. With the Aryan, the belief in the Beyond often takes a quite childish form ; but this belief does represent an effort towards a deepening of things. The man who doesn't believe in the Beyond has no understanding of religion. The great trick of Jewry was to insinuate itself fraudulently amongst the religions with a religion like Judaism, which in reality is not a religion. Simply, the Jew has put a religious camouflage over his racial doctrine. Everything he undertakes is built on this lie. The Jew can take the credit for having corrupted the Graeco- Roman world. Previously words were used to express thoughts; he used words to invent the art of disguising thoughts. Lies are his strength, his weapon in the struggle. The Jew is said to be gifted. His only gift is that of juggling with other people's property and swindling each and everyone. Suppose I find by chance a picture that I believe to be a Titian. I tell the owner what I think of it, and I offer him a price. In a similar case, the Jew begins by declaring that the picture is valueless, he buys it for a song and sells it at a profit of 5000 per cent. To persuade people that a thing which has value, has none, and vice versa—that's not a sign of intelligence. They can't even overcome the smallest economic crisis! The Jew has a talent for bringing confusion into the simplest matters, for getting everything muddled up. Thus comes the moment when nobody understands anything more about the question at issue. To tell you something utterly insignificant, the Jew drowns you in a flood of words. You try to analyse what he said, and you realise it's all wind. The Jew makes use of words to stultify his neighbours. And that's why people make them professors. The law of life is : "God helps him who helps himself!" It's so simple that everybody is convinced of it, and nobody would pay to learn it. But the Jew succeeds in getting himself rewarded for his meaningless glibness. Stop following what he says, for a moment, and at once his whole scaffolding collapses. I've always said, the Jews are the most diabolic creatures in existence, and at the same time the stupidest. They can't produce a musician, or a thinker. No art, nothing, less than nothing. They're liars, forgers, crooks. They owe their success only to the stupidity of their victims. If the Jew weren't kept presentable by the Aryan, he'd be so dirty he couldn't open his eyes. We can live without the Jews, but they couldn't live without us. When the Europeans realise that, they'll all become simultaneously aware of the solidarity that binds them together. The Jew prevents this solidarity. He owes his livelihood to the fact that this solidarity does not exist.

4 Personal Year Number Effort, Building, Planning This year is all about building a solid foundation for your future by putting systems in place that will help you improve your quality of life. For example, if you’re thinking of selling your home, this is the year to make property improvements and repairs in preparation for the sale. Or, if you’d like to start a business, this is a year to search for a location, build your client base, and develop your website. Think of this year as laying the groundwork to set yourself up for life. This can be a year of hard work, as 4 indicates that extra physical, mental, and emotional effort is required to obtain your desired results. So prioritize your time and face your challenges head-on. Now, it may take longer than usual for things to come to fruition and to reap the rewards of your efforts; however, the lesson of the 4 is to be patient and persevere through obstacles and delays. No matter hard it gets, never, ever give up! Think of this year as a test of your dedication and commitment to yourself, where your attitude is the key to your success. Physical, mental, emotional, and financial stability are essential this year, so focus on your health, be optimistic, deal with issues from the past, avoid unnecessary drama and confrontation with others, and plan your finances carefully. With dedication, determination, and discipline, you’ll be rewarded for your efforts.

All Western liberal democracies recognise the importance of the principle of ‘fairness’, but Australia probably emphasises it more than most. Our belief in the ‘fair go’ has evolved to become part of our national culture, even though it is not entirely clear what this term means. In the mid-nineteenth century, a ‘fair go’ seems to have referred mainly to the importance of opening up opportunities so that everyone could compete. It was consistent with what today we think of as a meritocratic ideal. In the early decades of federation, however, governments increasingly pursued a national agenda intended to blur social divisions and build a strong sense of belonging and sameness, and the ‘fair go’ ideal in this period came to be identified with the political manipulation of distributional outcomes associated with an egalitarian ethic. This national interventionist strategy has, however, been in retreat for 30 years or more (although it remains relatively strong in the area of social policy), and survey evidence demonstrates that most Australians today have a much broader understanding of ‘fairness’ than mere egalitarianism. The ‘fair go’ today still recognises the ideal of equalising outcomes, but it also encompasses the competing ideals of meritocracy (reward for effort and talent) and fair exchange (the liberal principle of the right to private property provided it has been acquired in accordance with the rule of law). The egalitarian definition of fairness, which is taken for granted by the social policy intelligentsia as the only relevant definition, does not therefore do justice to what most Australians mean by a ‘fair go’ in the contemporary period. Indeed, if our social affairs intellectuals and pressure groups ever got their way, and taxes and welfare benefits were both raised even higher than they are at present in order to narrow what they call the ‘income gap’, the result would be the very opposite of what most Australians think a ‘fair go’ entails.

Avoiding Chargebacks "Depending on the type of business, the frequency of charge backs will be higher for some businesses and more difficult to defend. Learning15 the proper way to handle a customer chargeback will help the owner and reduce the frequency. Having to pay charge backs can be very costly to the business owner resulting in losses. It could also be very discouraging to a new business owner knowing that he has to pay a penalty, as well as refund services rendered. It would be a good idea to be aware of the things about which your customers complain frequently and make it a goal to correct, improve, or remove it. It would be very unfortunate to learn of a damaging remark about your operation made on the Internet, rather than face- to- face. Make it a point to inquire of your customer whether he was dissatisfied. Make conversation with your customer and if the customer has a complaint, make every effort to resolve it as soon as possible. Charge backs could get very costly and sometimes settling the dispute with the customer could save you money. However, there will be times when the refund should not be given or attempts to settle this on the spot should not be made. The business owner will have to use his own judgment. Jesus counsels us to “Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you, Luke 6:27, (KJV).” No doubt some business owners will have difficulty doing this when the occasion arises, and some may have learned that this is the way to go. But, I encourage you to try this. As you do more and more business, you will find this to be a very necessary way for you to resolve conflicts in your business. It will be easier to do this than to resist, as Jesus said in Matthew 5:25 (KJV), “Agree with thine adversary quickly whilst thou art in the way with him.; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison.” Being cast into prison may be an extreme outcome, but we can avoid further conflicts if we would just humble ourselves and strive to resolve our conflicts. If it is any consolation, there are rewards for acting with love. Luke 6:35 says, “But love thee your enemies and do good and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil.” As one can see, business owners have a higher degree of responsibility because of the number of people with whom he/she interacts.

Getting used to the idea of “less but better” may prove harder than it sounds, especially when we have been rewarded in the past for doing more … and more and more. Yet at a certain point, more effort causes our progress to plateau and even stall. It’s true that the idea of a direct correlation between results and effort is appealing. It seems fair. Yet research across many fields paints a very different picture.

But simple consumer reluctance to switch providers is a major obstacle to competition in retail financial services. It is a well-known joke in the industry that customers change their spouses more often than their banks. They all seem the same: why transfer your loyalty from Tweedledee to Tweedledum? This inertia on the part of retail buyers is common across all financial products. Credit cards have consistently been one of the most profitable retail banking products. Bank of America, ‘first mover’ in this industry, continues to hold a strong position, despite aggressive attempts by entrants to solicit new business. Many people just do not like buying financial services, and minimise the time and effort they devote to their purchase as a result. The days when retail customers of financial services were rewarded for their loyalty are long gone. The replacement of a relationship-based culture by a transaction-based one means that the best deal is almost always obtained by shopping around aggressively rather than by building trust. Customer perceptions have lagged behind this harsh reality. But

value, I can do three things,” he says. “I can improve the algorithm itself, make it more sophisticated. I can throw more and better data at the algorithm so that the existing code produces better results. And I can change the speed of experimentation to get more results faster. “We focused on data and speed, not on a better algorithm.” Candela describes this decision as “dramatic” and “hard.” Computer scientists, especially academic-minded ones, are rewarded for inventing new algorithms or improving existing ones. A better statistical model is the goal. Getting cited in a journal is validation. Wowing your peers gives you cred. It requires a shift in thinking to get those engineers to focus on business impact before optimal statistical model. He thinks many companies are making the mistake of structuring their efforts around building the best algorithms, or hiring developers who claim to have the best algorithms, because that’s how many AI developers think.

If managers reward effort, eventually, their subordinates will spend their time showing effort rather than obtaining results.

His efforts can be seen by now to have rested on a profound understanding or, at least, a remarkable intuitive grasp of the limitations of “Persia,” that is, of classical aristocracy. He knew, for example, that the loyalty it demanded, like that for any particular, nonuniversal society, rested on an arbitrary division of mankind into fellow citizens (friends) and strangers (enemies actual or potential). (Compare Plato’s analysis in the Republic of the defects of justice understood as helping friends and harming enemies.) He knew likewise that the class hierarchy without which, in the premodern condition of material scarcity, the unique Persian system of public education could not have been supported, rested not on merit or natural capacity but on the indefensible criterion of inherited wealth. (In the Republic, Plato was able to remove this stain from classical aristocracy only by the extreme expedient of abolishing the family.) These defects of the old order were to be removed in the new by the creation of a universal (and therefore all-inclusive) empire and by making positions of wealth, honor, and responsibility within it depend upon merit alone. Above all, Cyrus knew or sensed the weakness of that attachment to virtue and virtuous deeds as ends in themselves which the old Persian education prided itself on producing, an attachment on which the preference for old Persia and its way of life depended. To speak now only of the attachment itself and not of the virtue that was its object, it was not truly the result of education in the strict sense of the word. Rather, it had been beaten into the Persian peers both literally and figuratively (through praise and blame). And an attachment so produced is vulnerable to temptation. (Compare what Plato suggests, in the myth of Er which concludes the Republic, by his tale of the choice of lives.) Still, in providing that temptation, in suggesting to the peers that they no longer pursue what they take to be virtue for its own sake but rather for its rewards, Cyrus would appear to be more of a corrupter than a reformer.

The topic of motivation often comes up when dealing with the issue of follow-through on plans. Many adults with ADHD may aspire to achieve a goal (e.g., exercise) or get through an unavoidable obligation (e.g., exam, paying bills), but fall prey to an apparent lack of motivation, despite their best intentions. This situation reminds us of a quote attributed to the late fitness expert, Jack LaLanne, who at the age of 93 was quoted as saying, “I’m feeling great and I still have sex almost every day. Almost on Monday, almost on Tuesday . . .” Returning to the executive dysfunction view of ADHD, motivation is defined as the ability to generate an emotion about a task that promotes follow-through in the absence of immediate reward or consequence (and often in the face of some degree of discomfort in the short-term). Said differently, motivation is the ability to make yourself “feel like” doing the task when there is no pressing reason to do so. Thus, you will have to find a way to make yourself feel like exercising before you achieve the results you desire or feel like studying for a midterm exam that is still several days away. You “know” logically that these are good ideas, but it is negative feelings (including boredom) or lack of feelings about a task that undercut your attempts to get started. In fact, one of the common thinking errors exhibited by adults with ADHD when procrastinating is the magnification of emotional discomfort associated with starting a task usually coupled with a minimization of the positive feelings associated with it. Adults with ADHD experience the double whammy of having greater difficulty generating positive emotions (i.e., motivation) needed to get engaged in tasks and greater difficulty inhibiting the allure of more immediate distractions, including those that provide an escape from discomfort. In fairness, from a developmental standpoint, adults with ADHD have often experienced more than their fair share of frustrations and setbacks with regard to many important aspects of their lives. Hence, our experience has been that various life responsibilities and duties have become associated with a degree of stress and little perceived reward, which magnifies the motivational challenges already faced by ADHD adults. We have adopted the metaphor of food poisoning to illustrate how one’s learning history due to ADHD creates barriers to the pursuit of valued personal goals. Food poisoning involves ingesting some sort of tainted food. It is an adaptive response that your brain and digestive system notice the presence of a toxin in the body and react with feelings of nausea and rapid expulsion of said toxin through diarrhea, vomiting, or both. Even after you have fully recuperated and have figured out that you had food poisoning, the next time you encounter that same food item, even before it reaches your lips, the sight and smell of the food will reactivate protective feelings of nausea due to the previous association of the stimulus (i.e., the food) with illness and discomfort. You can make all the intellectual arguments about your safety, and obtain assurances that the food is untainted, but your body will have this initial aversive reaction, regardless. It takes progressive exposure to untainted morsels of the food (sometimes mixing it in with “safe” food, in extreme cases) in order to break the food poisoning association. Similarly, in the course of your efforts to establish and maintain good habits for managing ADHD, you will encounter some tasks that elicit discomfort despite knowing the value of the task at hand. Therefore, it is essential to be able to manufacture motivation, just enough of it, in order to be able to shift out of avoidance and to take a “taste” of the task that you are delaying.

In all true artistic feeling, the pursuit, not the result, is the reward; for where Art is rightly pursued, it produces a continual satisfaction in the fact that, however slow, there is progress, and that progress is sure; and although the work done may have no mercantile value whatever, it may be regarded as the effort of an immortal mind striving to improve itself, and, therefore, precious.

the angriest and most passionate voices, start to be rewarded by public opinion. This phenomenon is clearly observed in mainstream and social media. Consider the following comparison, for instance. After sixteen-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg made her landmark UN speech in 2019, media attention soared. While her efforts and sense of initiative were undeniably impressive, especially for a teenager, the fact remains that her credentials on the subject were nonexistent, and her scowling message offered no practical solutions whatsoever. Compare her accomplishments to another young environmentalist named Boyan Slat, who doesn’t make passionate speeches or hurl angry slogans, but did design a revolutionary ocean cleanup system that captures debris ranging from one-ton ghost nets to tiny microplastics. At the time of this writing, a quick Google search shows 69 million search results for Greta, and just over 500,000 for Boyan. Greta was named ‘Person of the Year’ by Time magazine. Boyan was not.

From the Bridge” The Importance of History Not all that many years ago the Importance of history would have been a “no brainer!” People understood that there was very little new under the sun, and history was a good barometer to the future. “Those that fail to heed history are doomed to repeat it, “was an adage frequently heard. It gave us a perspective by which to stabilize our bearings and allowed us to find one of the few ways by which we could understand who we are. The myth that George Washington, not being able to lie, admitted to chopping down his father’s favorite cherry tree helped us create a moral compass. Abraham Lincoln’s moniker “Honest Abe,” took root when he worked as a young store clerk in New Salem, IL. The name stuck before he became a lawyer or a politician. His writings show that he valued honesty and in 1859 when he ran for the presidency the nickname became his campaign slogan. However, apparently ”Honest Abe” did lie about whether he was negotiating with the South to end the war and also knowingly concealed some of the most lethal weapons ever devised during the Civil War." These however, were very minor infractions when compared to what we are now expected to believe from our politicians. Since World War II the pace of life has moved faster than ever and may actually have overrun our ability to understand the significance and value of our own honesty. We no longer turn to our past for guidance regarding the future; rather we look into our future in terms of what we want and how we will get it. We have developed to the point that we are much smarter than our ancestors and no longer need their morality and guidance. What we don’t know we frequently fabricate and in most cases, no one picks up on it and if they do, it really doesn’t seem to matter. In short the past has become outdated, obsolete and therefore has become largely irrelevant to us. Being less informed about our past is not the result of a lack of information or education, but of ambivalence and indifference. Perhaps history belongs to the ages but not to us. To a great extent we as a people really do not believe that history matters very much, if at all. My quote “History is not owned solely by historians. It is part of everyone’s heritage,” was written for the opening page of my award winning book “The Exciting Story of Cuba.” Not only is it the anchor holding our Ship of State firmly secure, it is the root of our very being. Yes, history is important. In centuries past this statement would have been self-evident. Our predecessors devoted much time and effort in teaching their children history and it helped provide the foundation to understanding who they were. It provided them a reference whereby they could set their own life’s goals. However society has, to a great extent, turned its back on the past. We now live in an era where the present is most important and our future is being built on shifting sand. We, as a people are presently engaged in a struggle for economic survival and choose to think of ourselves in terms of where wind and tide is taking us, rather than where we came from. We can no longer identify with our ancestors, thus they are no longer relevant. Their lives were so different from our own that they no longer can shed any light on our experience or existence. Therefore, in the minds of many of us, the past no longer has the value it once had nor do we give it the credence it deserves. As in war, the truth is the first victim; however this casualty threatens the very fabric of our being. When fact and fiction are interchanged to satisfy the moment, the bedrock of history in undermined. When we depend on the truth to structure our future, it is vital that it be based on truthful history and the honesty of those who write it. It is a crime without penalty when our politicians tell us lies. In fact they are often shamefully rewarded; encouraging them to become even more blatant in the lies they tell.

The educational element in the adab discussion of knowledge is unmistakable in a monograph entitled “The Encouragement of Seeking and Being Eager to Gather Knowledge” by Abû Hilâl al-Askarî. The brief work is distinguished by the comparative originality of its contents and the author’s willingness to give his own views and comments on the sayings and stories he cites. His aim is to show that while the acquisition of knowledge calls for hard work, industriousness, and great sacrifi ce, the rewards both material and spiritual are worth the effort required. The two basic ideas are rather skilfully interwoven, with the principal stress on the necessity of relentless labor. Knowledge means perfection or, as the author puts it, “perfect among men is he who realizes the excellence of knowledge and then is able to study, in order to obtain knowledge,” and, as a result, to taste the sweetness of the incomparable pleasure it provides.

What that extra time does is allow for a more relaxed atmosphere,” Corcoran said, after the class was over. “I find that the problem with math education is the sink-or-swim approach. Everything is rapid fire, and the kids who get it first are the ones who are rewarded. So there comes to be a feeling that there are people who can do math and there are people who aren’t math people. I think that extended amount of time gives you the chance as a teacher to explain things, and more time for the kids to sit and digest everything that’s going on—to review, to do things at a much slower pace. It seems counterintuitive but we do things at a slower pace and as a result we get through a lot more. There’s a lot more retention, better understanding of the material. It lets me be a little bit more relaxed. We have time to have games. Kids can ask any questions they want, and if I’m explaining something, I don’t feel pressed for time. I can go back over material and not feel time pressure.” The extra time gave Corcoran the chance to make mathematics meaningful: to let his students see the clear relationship between effort and reward.

The level of our happiness is said to decrease when we have more than seven free hours in a day. Serotonin is inert in the brains of people who suffer from depression. A person with strong willpower isn't tempted in the first place. Your willpower will be lost if you give in to negative emotions like uncertainty or doubt. When that happens, the brain takes instinctive action and tells you to try to grab the reward in front of you. As a result you may eat or drink too much or lose the motivation to do anything. Then, later, you regret those actions and feel more stress. 45% of our actions are habits rather than decisions made on the spot. To dye a dirty cloth, you must first wash it. ( a teaching of Ayurveda ) There is value to anything if you take it seriously. You often become susceptible to addictions if the rewards come quickly. People who are unable to clean up or part with their things will sometimes feel anger towards minimalists and I believe it's because some part of them is anxious about their own actions. Our present identities shouldn't constrain our future actions. The time after you get up is the time when you can concentrate the best. As the day goes by, unexpected things and distractions will happen and build up so it's best to do what you want to do in the morning. Waking up early is a must and if you lose that first battle, you will lose in all the battles. Realize that enthusiasm won't occur before you do something. You won't feel motivated unless you start acting. Amazon rules over the buying habits of so many people because its hurdles are extremely low. People's motivation will easily go away when faced with a simple hurdle. When you quit something, it's easier to quit it completely. With acquiring a habit, it's the opposite, easier to do it every day. A plan relieves you of the torment of choice. Success is a consequence and must not be a goal. The result will be burnout if you only have a target. All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence and then success is sure. Mark Twain To have a sense of self-efficacy is to believe "I can do this!". It's the belief that you can change, grow, learn and overcome new challenges. Talking about someone's talent can wait until you've exceeded the effort that that person has made. If we changed houses periodically, we would have the joy of exploring our new environment each time and there would also be the joy of gaining control over each new environment, This instinct is probably what drives curiosity and the desire for self-development. If we don't cultivate our own opportunities for development, we'll only be able to find joy in modern society's "ready-made" fun. Activities structured so that we have to "Enjoy this in this way", where the way to have fun is already decided, will eventually bore us. And then, someday, we'll be bored with ourselves. Making it a habit to seek unique opportunities for development and gaining the sense that we're always doing something new: these are things that satisfy human instinct. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world. The Dhammapada, The Sayings of the Buddha Something that you thought was your personality can change with a simple habit. People are instinctively inclined to get bored of what they have now and pursue new things. So no matter how successful they become, they will worry and find reasons to feel uncertain. They will get used to any environment and they will get bored with it. Training in Buddhism: when cleaning is part of the training, you're taught to thoroughly eliminate rationalizations such as " this is already clean, so it doesn't have to be cleaned.

This may be the fundamental problem with caring a lot about what others think: It can put you on the established path—the my-isn’t-that-impressive path—and keep you there for a long time. Maybe it stops you from swerving, from ever even considering a swerve, because what you risk losing in terms of other people’s high regard can feel too costly. Maybe you spend three years in Massachusetts, studying constitutional law and discussing the relative merits of exclusionary vertical agreements in antitrust cases. For some, this might be truly interesting, but for you it is not. Maybe during those three years you make friends you’ll love and respect forever, people who seem genuinely called to the bloodless intricacies of the law, but you yourself are not called. Your passion stays low, yet under no circumstance will you underperform. You live, as you always have, by the code of effort/result, and with it you keep achieving until you think you know the answers to all the questions—including the most important one. Am I good enough? Yes, in fact I am. What happens next is that the rewards get real. You reach for the next rung of the ladder, and this time it’s a job with a salary in the Chicago offices of a high-end law firm called Sidley & Austin. You’re back where you started, in the city where you were born, only now you go to work on the forty-seventh floor in a downtown building with a wide plaza and a sculpture out front. You used to pass by it as a South Side kid riding the bus to high school, peering mutely out the window at the people who strode like titans to their jobs. Now you’re one of them. You’ve worked yourself out of that bus and across the plaza and onto an upward-moving elevator so silent it seems to glide. You’ve joined the tribe. At the age of twenty-five, you have an assistant. You make more money than your parents ever have. Your co-workers are polite, educated, and mostly white. You wear an Armani suit and sign up for a subscription wine service. You make monthly payments on your law school loans and go to step aerobics after work. Because you can, you buy yourself a Saab. Is there anything to question? It doesn’t seem that way. You’re a lawyer now. You’ve taken everything ever given to you—the love of your parents, the faith of your teachers, the music from Southside and Robbie, the meals from Aunt Sis, the vocabulary words drilled into you by Dandy—and converted it to this. You’ve climbed the mountain. And part of your job, aside from parsing abstract intellectual property issues for big corporations, is to help cultivate the next set of young lawyers being courted by the firm. A senior partner asks if you’ll mentor an incoming summer associate, and the answer is easy: Of course you will. You have yet to understand the altering force of a simple yes. You don’t know that when a memo arrives to confirm the assignment, some deep and unseen fault line in your life has begun to tremble, that some hold is already starting to slip. Next to your name is another name, that of some hotshot law student who’s busy climbing his own ladder. Like you, he’s black and from Harvard. Other than that, you know nothing—just the name, and it’s an odd one. Barack.

The merit principle assumes a connection between individual effort and expected reward, and offers criteria as to how this reward should look in terms of income, social position, and so on. But the liberal merit principle has been hollowed out in recent years; instead of this we have a culture of success in which what counts is not effort but simply results. Economic and political elites are treated as high performers, who define performance by their very success. In a monstrous act of self-reference, the key measure of success is now success itself.119 In this way, a manager is a high performer on the basis of his or her position in the social hierarchy, quite independent of their actual achievement. A hospital nurse, who works responsibly and with great personal attention for seven days a week, is not seen as a high performer—because she does not enjoy the same monetary success.

The results of Jana’s project were stunning: The volunteers who received recognition for their efforts were 20 percent more likely to volunteer for Wikipedia again in the following month than those of equal caliber who earned no praise for their work. And, amazingly, this gap in engagement had remarkable staying power—the volunteers who earned symbolic awards were 13 percent more likely than others to be active on Wikipedia a year later. Jana’s experiment with Wikipedia is an example of something called “gamification,” or the act of making an activity that isn’t a game feel more engaging and less monotonous by adding gamelike features such as symbolic rewards, a sense of competition, and leaderboards.

and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself up for me.’ “Faith! The word washed over me like a tidal wave. All along, I thought I was exercising faith — I thought I was trusting the Lord for our needs. I realized at that moment that I wasn’t trusting HIM at all — I was trusting in some idea about how my own efforts would be a formula that resulted in rewards from God. If I did my part, He would do His part — as if He needed my help! I was trusting in myself first and expecting God to honor my effort.

Shaye and Bob Woodward have 40 years of combined experience in teaching, coaching, and writing material for the benefit of God’s children. Both are Certified Relationship Specialists as well as Certified Life Coaches. Over the past 15 years, they have volunteered countless hours in service to those lacking in knowledge and skill. They have donated time and effort in teaching classes, seminars, and individual coaching sessions to assist people in learning, growing, creating, and becoming more than they were before. The results have been phenomenal and rewarding at the same time. This book was created by them to allow all those who would receive it to move forward in happiness, joy, and peace. It is the first of a series of books designed for this purpose.

Goal displacement through diversion of effort to what gets measured. Goal displacement comes in many varieties. When performance is judged by a few measures, and the stakes are high (keeping one’s job, getting a raise, raising the stock price at the time that stock options are vested), people will focus on satisfying those measures—often at the expense of other, more important organizational goals that are not measured.1 Economists Bengt Holmström and Paul Milgrom have described it in more formal terms as a problem of misaligned incentives: workers who are rewarded for the accomplishment of measurable tasks reduce the effort devoted to other tasks.2 The result is that the metric means comes to replace the organizational ends that those means ought to serve.

Degradation of work. Compelling the people in an organization to focus their efforts on the narrow range of what gets measured leads to a degradation of the experience of work. Edmund Phelps, a Nobel Prize winning economist, claims in his book Mass Flourishing: How Grassroots Innovation Created Jobs, Challenge, and Change that one of the virtues of capitalism is its ability to provide “the experience of mental stimulation, the challenge of new problems to solve, the chance to try the new, and the excitement of venturing into the unknown.”9 That is indeed a possibility under capitalism. But those subject to performance metrics are forced to focus their efforts on limited goals, imposed by others, who may not understand the work that they do. For the workers under scrutiny, mental stimulation is dulled, they decide neither the problems to be solved nor how to solve them, and there is no excitement of venturing into the unknown because the unknown is beyond the measureable. In short, the entrepreneurial element of human nature—which extends beyond the owners of enterprises—may be stifled by metric fixation.10 One result is to motivate those with greater initiative and enterprise to move out of mainstream, large-scale organizations where the culture of accountable performance prevails. Teachers move out of public schools to private schools and charter schools. Engineers move out of large corporations to boutique firms. Enterprising government employees become consultants. There is a healthy element in this. But surely the large-scale organizations of our society are the poorer for driving out those most likely to innovate and initiate. The more that work becomes a matter of filling in the boxes by which performance is to be measured and rewarded, the more it will repel those who think outside the box.

Rewarding luck. Measuring outcomes when the people involved have little control over the results is tantamount to rewarding luck. It means that people are rewarded or penalized for outcomes that are actually independent of their efforts. Those penalized rightly feel that they’ve been treated unfairly.

Another tenet of the Gita is nonattachment to results. As Lord Krishna, an incarnation of God, tells Arjuna: “You have the right to work, but never to the fruit of work. You should never engage in action for the sake of reward, nor should you long for inaction.” Sever work from outcome, the Gita teaches. Invest 100 percent effort into every endeavor and precisely zero percent into the results. Gandhi summed up this outlook in a single word: “desirelessness.” It is not an invitation to indolence. The karma yogi is a person of action. She is doing a lot, except worrying about results. This is not our way. We are results-oriented. Fitness trainers, business consultants, doctors, colleges, dry cleaners, recovery programs, dieticians, financial advisors. They, and many others, promise results. We might question their ability to deliver results, but rarely do we question the underlying assumption that being results-oriented is good. Gandhi was not results-oriented. He was process-oriented. He aimed not for Indian independence but for an India worthy of independence.

Jameson Taylor is like a puzzle. And I’ve always liked puzzles. Searching for the right piece to fit perfectly in just the right place… it’s time-consuming and challenging, but it brings a kind of order to the chaos, and if you put in the effort, the end result is always rewarding. And that’s why I do it: for the reward. And now… sitting opposite Jamie, watching her, I feel like I need to somehow piece her together.

Who you’re becoming is always more important than what you’re doing, yet the irony is that it’s what you’re doing that is always determining who you’re becoming. As long as you maintain Unwavering Faith and put forth Extraordinary Effort with each and every goal you set, regardless of your results, you will always learn, grow, and become more capable than you were before. And your future goals, including those you have yet to even imagine, will reap the rewards.

Often times in Life, your efforts may not bring you the results that you want. That’s when you feel frustrated and defeated. But think about it deeply: Life never gave you any guarantees. It never promised you that your efforts will be rewarded instantaneously. So, in reality, it is not Life that is frustrating you. It is your expectation that your effort must immediately yield you a certain result that is frustrating you. Drop that expectation and learn to be non-frustrated. Only then will you be happy. Now, employ your Happiness in working harder. Work smarter. Make your effort unputdownable. And leave the outcome to Life. Enjoy the process of making the effort meaningful instead of craving for the reward that you believe you deserve.

Management by objective (MBO) which means purposeful leadership to achieve a strategic objective is one of the keys to successful airline management. MBO is also referred to as Management by Results – MBR. This is a system where subordinates coordinate with their superiors to achieve the desired objective. Under this principle, the goals of the organization are linked to employee goals. Management objectives are made to meet operational objectives. And both management and operational objectives are made to achieve organizational long-term objectives. Organisational objectives are linked to the vision and mission of the organisation. The team is made aware of the achievable goals of the organization and unified effort is exerted in that direction; on the other hand, the employee whose performance is noteworthy will be rewarded by the organization. This builds a transparent and clean work culture on one hand and the other unclogs communication blocks.

Westerners, not just Lincoln Steffens. It took in the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States. It even took in the Soviet Union’s own leaders, such as Nikita Khrushchev, who famously boasted in a speech to Western diplomats in 1956 that “we will bury you [the West].” As late as 1977, a leading academic textbook by an English economist argued that Soviet-style economies were superior to capitalist ones in terms of economic growth, providing full employment and price stability and even in producing people with altruistic motivation. Poor old Western capitalism did better only at providing political freedom. Indeed, the most widely used university textbook in economics, written by Nobel Prize–winner Paul Samuelson, repeatedly predicted the coming economic dominance of the Soviet Union. In the 1961 edition, Samuelson predicted that Soviet national income would overtake that of the United States possibly by 1984, but probably by 1997. In the 1980 edition there was little change in the analysis, though the two dates were delayed to 2002 and 2012. Though the policies of Stalin and subsequent Soviet leaders could produce rapid economic growth, they could not do so in a sustained way. By the 1970s, economic growth had all but stopped. The most important lesson is that extractive institutions cannot generate sustained technological change for two reasons: the lack of economic incentives and resistance by the elites. In addition, once all the very inefficiently used resources had been reallocated to industry, there were few economic gains to be had by fiat. Then the Soviet system hit a roadblock, with lack of innovation and poor economic incentives preventing any further progress. The only area in which the Soviets did manage to sustain some innovation was through enormous efforts in military and aerospace technology. As a result they managed to put the first dog, Leika, and the first man, Yuri Gagarin, in space. They also left the world the AK-47 as one of their legacies. Gosplan was the supposedly all-powerful planning agency in charge of the central planning of the Soviet economy. One of the benefits of the sequence of five-year plans written and administered by Gosplan was supposed to have been the long time horizon necessary for rational investment and innovation. In reality, what got implemented in Soviet industry had little to do with the five-year plans, which were frequently revised and rewritten or simply ignored. The development of industry took place on the basis of commands by Stalin and the Politburo, who changed their minds frequently and often completely revised their previous decisions. All plans were labeled “draft” or “preliminary.” Only one copy of a plan labeled “final”—that for light industry in 1939—has ever come to light. Stalin himself said in 1937 that “only bureaucrats can think that planning work ends with the creation of the plan. The creation of the plan is just the beginning. The real direction of the plan develops only after the putting together of the plan.” Stalin wanted to maximize his discretion to reward people or groups who were politically loyal, and punish those who were not. As for Gosplan, its main role was to provide Stalin with information so he could better monitor his friends and enemies. It actually tried to avoid making decisions. If you made a decision that turned out badly, you might get shot. Better to avoid all responsibility. An example of what could happen

The worst outcome would be that your child’s attention and focus is taken off the task in hand and is placed onto the reward. In order to be successful, your child needs to have a clear picture of his goal and want it badly. Offering money in return for good results places your child’s desire in the wrong place and make no mistake, your child will figure out how to obtain maximum reward for minimum effort.

Alienation is inevitable when our inner sense of value becomes status-driven, hinging on externally imposed standards of competitive achievement and acquisition, and a highly conditional acceptance — I should say "acceptability" — in others' eyes. With the erosion of the middle class in recent decades, people who judged themselves in terms of wordly success have sustained a perceived loss of worth. The promise of the middle-class dream has largely evaporated, to the distress and deep anger of many. But even people perched atop the economic pyramid can experience a devaluation of self, for the simple reason that materialistic values run counter to the need for meaning, for purpose beyond self-serving endeavors. There are no moral fingers to wag here. Objectively, it is the case that centering on the self's evanescent desires to the exclusion of communal needs results in a diminished connection to our deepest selves, which is to say the parts of us that generate and sustain true well-being. Whatever "wins" our personality can rack up, whatever momentary sense of security we gain through our various identities, however much we burnish our image or self-image with material gains — these are a flimsy replacement for the rewards (and challenges) of being alive to one's humanity. An investor dabbling daily in millions told Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Charles Duhigg, "I feel like I'm wasting my life. When I die, is anyone going to care that I earned an extra percentage point on my return? My work feels totally meaningless." That loss of meaning, Duhigg says, afflicts "even professionals given to lofty self-images, like those in medicine and law." Why would this be? the author wondered. The answer: "Oppresive hours, political infighting, increased competition sparked by globalization, an 'always-on culture' bred by the internet — but also something that's hard for these professionals to put their finger on, an underlying sense that their work isn't worth the grueling effort they're putting into it." It's simple economics, really: artificial inflation (of self-concept, of identity, of material ambition) is bound to lead to a downturn or even a crash when the bubble inevitable burts.

The 80/20 Principle asserts that a minority of causes, inputs, or effort usually lead to a majority of the results, outputs, or rewards. Taken literally, this means that, for example, 80 percent of what you achieve in your job comes from 20 percent of the time spent.