No substitute to hard work

Few would doubt Thomas Edison's talent as an inventor, yet he's known to have said, "Genius is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration". There is no reason to doubt Wipro scion Rishad Premji's assertion that hard work matters more than smartness or talent. The world of business is full of success stories that bolster his argument. A clerk in a trading firm in Aden went on to become Dhirubhai Ambani. From the ashes of World War II Japan, Akio Morita built Sony. And from Steve Jobs to Mark Zuckerberg, the IT industry is full of examples of those who had nothing more than a vision but went on to change the world. Sure, these people were talented. But it's one thing to come up with ideas, quite another to make them happen. Hard work is the critical input that separates the great from the ordinary.

This couldn't be any truer in the world of sport. In cricket Sachin Tendulkar, hailed as arguably the greatest batsman of all times, is a study in hard work. Known for practising hours at a stretch, the Little Master hasn't given up the habit even after 20 years in the game. In contrast, players who were considered equally talented but lacked the discipline, such as Brian Lara and Vinod Kambli, have long fallen by the wayside. Similarly, Jamaican champion sprinter Usain Bolt is supremely gifted. But that doesn't stop him from training six days a week. Despite having won numerous Olympic laurels, swimmer Michael Phelps still puts in 50 miles every week during peak training.

Even in the arts, talent can only bloom through devotion and hard work. Musical geniuses such as Pandit Ravi Shankar, Ustad Zakir Hussain, Ustad Bismillah Khan, Girija Devi and others all have years of practice to show for. Pablo Picasso wasn't born a great artist. Talent is a bonus. But scaling the peak of success is impossible without hard work.