Hard work alone is stupidity

Today, my team had to compete with other teams for the longest time in a single two storey parachute drop. Ours was one of the worse and yet we built many prototypes and tried different materials, arguably, we did the most work among all the teams. Nevertheless, we did a lot of work to build our parachute that didn't work too well. So I will now talk about hard work and working hard.

The title, "Hard work alone is stupidity", is a reflection of the real world. Hard work alone brings you no where, its like an investment. To put hard work into something is to invest time and effort, to simply put in lots of investment would not work. Like money, effort that were not properly allocated would simply be wasted. One common example in Asian countries would be "mugging" or rote learning(memorisation). Rote learning is basically learning by memory and repetition than by logic and understanding. Students in Asia tend to depend on memorising notes and textbooks than processing and interpreting the subject at hand. Thus, students are often seen "recording" their textbooks and scoring poor scores at the end of the day; often punished by their parents for not "working hard" when they did. However, many whom did not perform mass data recording managed to score distinctions in exams.

Effort, if allocated wisely could produce results beyond one's imaginations, like founding a successful company for example. As effort without planning is an unsound investment, planning without effort are simply plans. Effort is that which plans come into fruition and plans prevents effort from being wasted. Therefore, hard work alone is nothing but hard work with proper planning create new possibilities. That is why businessmen are richer than a farmer even though farmers work much harder than businessmen. This world relies upon intelligence and hard work, lack one and failure is inevitable.

In conclusion, one must both work hard and plan ahead. Many people waste their hard work on the wrong aspects of their goals while others who work solely and place little effort on the right aspects would succeed. This is life and its all about taking advantage of resources, hard work is nothing but a resource.