HARD WORK: THE FIRST PREREQUISITE FOR SUCCESS
According to Cambridge dictionary, a workaholic is a person who works a lot of the time and finds it difficult not to work.
We could infer from the definitions above, that a workaholic is anyone who cannot function without work. If you must become a workaholic, you will have to so love work that you become addicted to it. If you become addicted to work, you cannot live a day without working. Any day you are not able to work, you will feel so bad and depressed like something bad happened to you. If you can feel comfortable a day without work, then you are not yet a workaholic.
“The three great essentials to achieve anything worthwhile are, first, hard work; second, stick-to-itiveness; third, common sense.” -Thomas Edison
Thomas Alva Edison was born on February 11, 1847, in Milan, Ohio. He was the last of the seven children of Samuel and Nancy Edison. Thomas’s father was a political activist while his mother was an accomplished school teacher. He suffered an early bout of scarlet fever and ear infections which resulted in hearing difficulties in both ears, and eventually left him nearly deaf as an adult.
In 1854, the family moved to Michigan, where Edison spent the rest of his childhood. He went to school only a short time. He did so poorly and was regarded as a difficult child by his teacher. He couldn’t cope with school and he was withdrawn to be taught at home by his mother, a former teacher. He learned to love reading, a habit he kept for the rest of his life. He also liked to make experiments in the basement. All through his life, he was a hard worker who devoted most of his time into experimenting and giving birth to inventions. He invested his time working all night most times such that he was able to invent and develop products like the telegraph, phonograph, the electric light bulb, alkaline storage batteries and Kinetograph (a camera for motion pictures).
All through his life he built several laboratories and workshops and employed several workers. But the question is “How was he able to invent and develop all these products?” The answer was simply his love for work. He knew that without work nothing could be invented or produced.
Thomas Edison goes into his workshop and works relentlessly until he forgets time. He could go into his workshop on Monday and work till Friday without knowing that five days have passed. When they come to remind him that it’s Friday already, he will argue that it’s just the next day thinking that he’s just been there for two days. Only a man who is a lover of work could work so much so that he becomes unaware of time. Hard work was the key to all of his inventions. He became a great name in history, thanks to hard work.
“I never did anything worth doing entirely by accident…. Almost none of my inventions were derived in that manner. They were achieved by having trained myself to be analytical and to endure and tolerate hard work.” -Thomas Edison
From his words, you could see that all of his inventions were born out of his ability to endure and tolerate hard work. Because of his love for work, he was always in that workshop experimenting and inventing things. He lost touch with the environment outside his laboratory that they would break the door to get him out. That was because he understood that to achieve anything of worth in life, hard work is a prerequisite.
It is true that so many people desire to become great achievers in life, however only a few truly love hard work. No matter how strong your desire to achieve anything in life is, until you become a lover of work, nothing can be achieved. There is no great or successful person today or in history who was not a lover of hard work. From Thomas Edison to Li Ka-Shing, to Michelangelo, to Beethoven and from Michael Jordan to Donald Trump, to Serena Williams, to Tiger woods and the likes, one thing is common with every one of them; that is the fact that they all became lovers of work. They all were workaholics.
To become a great achiever, you have no other option than becoming a lover of work like the great and successful names listed above. Until you begin to enjoy work, you can never become a great achiever like Thomas Edison. You could see the proof of his love for work in his words below.
“Personally, I enjoy working about 18 hours a day. Besides the short catnaps I take each day, I average about four to five hours of sleep per night” – Thomas Edison
To be continued Tomorrow, don’t miss it.
Excerpts from the Book “Why You Urgently Need To Become A Workaholic”. #DSABOOKS
This book can be found on dsabooksplanet.com and Amazon.com
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, CHURCH AND NATION
By Pastor Sunday Adelaja.
