Steve Jobs on Hardwork

"I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance."

Saala Khadoos

Just saw the movie today. It’s about an ex-boxer (R.Madhavan) finding a young girl (Ritika Singh) who used to sell fishes to earn a living. He saw boxing talent in her and trained and backed her, eventually resulting in her winning the World Championship in Boxing. Some may think that this sounds next to impossible. However looking at the plot of the movie, I feel that her winning the championship was an inevitable outcome.

Clear & inherent skill set: Ritika was shown as a fish seller who had a short temper and used to often get into fights. In one such fight, she was seen by Madhavan, who immediately realized how skilled she was and had immense potential if trained well.

Combination of passion & hardwork: Once Madhavan was able to convince Ritika about making a career in boxing, Ritika showed immense passion in pursuing the same. She was extremely energetic and could train under her coach for long periods.

Amazing mentor: Madhavan was shown to have the requisite skill (as he had nearly won the championship himself some years back) and the passion to drive Ritika. He held her hand through all her ups and downs and followed his belief that she could become a great boxer.

Distancing emotions from work: When Ritika was shown to fall in love with Madhavan which deviated her from her career, Madhavan kept pushing her towards her boxing. She faced a lot of problems at this time. Eventually when she realized the value of her career, she was able to put in immense hard work which led her to winning the championship.

I really liked the movie, though I felt that a little more about the hard work put in by Ritika and how she won her matches could be shown. It’s an inspiring movie which teaches us the importance of passion, hard work and grit to succeed in life.

Enjoy the journey

Entrepreneurs need to be focused, hard working, passionate, patient, adaptive etc. etc. However, one thing which is very important to last out the journey is to have fun along the way.

While we were building Bitequest, there were many instances where we used to go for tie ups to different bars and used to end up having a couple of beers, especially during our last meetings on a particular day. They say combining work with pleasure is not a good thing. But just working and being rigid is not the solution. One should enjoy what you are doing and at times this may entail doing something you are not supposed to :).