(note: first post in 3 months!)

I’m come to an interesting conclusion recently: hard work won’t always pay off. Smart work won’t always pay off. Persistence won’t always mean success.

Sometimes, all you need is patience. 

Even more interesting than my conclusion is where I got it from. To begin, I’ll start by showing two screenshots. 

This shows games I played on Monday (mostly against Gold league players)

This shows games I played today (mostly against Platinum players, who are in the league above Gold)

It doesn’t take a Starcraft expert to wonder understand what happened. Almost overnight, I reversed my win/loss ratio while playing against supposedly better players. To explain: if you consistently win, the system matches you with better players in an attempt to keep win/loss ratio at 50/50.

It felt weird and I thought it was just an anomaly, but I continued to play and maintained a fairly steady win rate. I was confused: I had been working so hard to improve and been taking the game quite seriously during my loss streaks, but just a day later the wins came easily. 

I wondered: Why didn’t my initial hard work result in immediate improvement?  

It seemed like the harder I worked, the more I lost. I’d play a ton of games, but wouldn’t win many of them. The more casually and less seriously I played, the more I won. I’d play a few games a day, and won the majority of them. 

But the answer to my question above is: it did, just not immediately. I just wouldn’t see the fruition of my efforts until I gave it some time. 

My losing streak had been going on for a (since the end of last week), and I was getting increasingly frustrated. But underneath my frustration was a steadily learning mind. Each loss wasn’t a dismal failure, but rather a step towards better understanding the game. 

After some coaching and replay analysis with some far better Starcraft players, I figured out key areas that I needed to improve. Today was the first time I got to practice them, and the results are telling. 

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How many times in life do we face situations like this? Things don’t go our way, we work harder, and follow the conventional logic that hard work is directly proportional to success. 

Sometimes, success comes as a result of working harder. You put more effort in, and grind your way through. But you won’t always succeed.

Sometimes, success comes as a result of working smarter. You don’t put a higher quantity of effort in, but you rethink your work and instead put in a higher quality. But again, you won’t always succeed.

Sometimes, success comes as a result of not only working hard and working smart. Sometimes, success comes as a result of letting both simmer while you simply give it time. 

Work won’t always pay dividends immediately- investments today may take years until you reap the benefits. But don’t let that deter you. As long as you have the desire to progress forward and improve, let matters in the background work themselves out. You may be improving without even noticing it!

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Now, before you call me a Starcraft nerd you have to understand that I believe everything, even a Real-Time Strategy game, is applicable to self-improvement. And while being promoted from Gold to Platinum is a funny characterization of success, it I think it serves as an excellent example. 

What lessons did I learn from my recent Starcraft adventures? (my FM takeaways)

1. Persistence alone isn’t good enough- sometimes you just need time 
2. Hard work is pointless unless you have the supplementary support of mentors who can point you in the right direction to work hard

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Just for fun, I also made a rage comic!