Essay for undergraduate admission to Georgia Institute of Technology
PROMPT: What is the best advice you ever received and did you follow it?
In any endeavor, there are three crucial phases: planning, worrying, and executing. Each is absolutely essential, and although their order and duration may vary, omitting a single one of them is sufficient to ensure your failure. That isn't the real danger though. The thing that derails more endeavors than anything else is allowing any two of the three to overlap.
This was a piece of advice that I heard somewhere in my sophomore year, and for the life of me I couldn't tell you where I heard it. Regardless, I've found it to be one of the most profound and unexpected truths I've ever heard, and it's had a massive impact on my life, particularly upon how I've approached projects and problems. Keep in mind that the terms above are used loosely: "planning" could be literally drawing schematics for a robot arm, or it could be studying for a challenging test.
You see, early in life I (and many other people I knew) had approached most endeavors in a totally ineffective manner. Often times I would find myself worrying about an endeavor while I was in the process of laying out initial plans. Frequently I would begin worrying about the outcome of a project while in the midst of essaying it. Sometimes I would utterly neglect to plan for an endeavor, or - worse still and infinitely more embarrassing - find that I had lacked the courage to even attempt it. All of these activities were, as I realized midway through sophomore year, completely contrary to the advice I had just received. The most astonishing part about the whole epiphany was that it made immediate sense.
The first two parts of the counsel are intuitive: there are certain steps to go through to complete an endeavor, and failing to do one will nearly always cause you to fail. The third is less obvious, yet it makes sense when thought about. Consider the combinations. Planning while simultaneously executing is a disaster - it's fairly equivalent to entirely neglecting the planning phase. It is flying by the seat of your pants and succeeding through nothing but instinct and prayer (or more likely just falling on the seat of your pants). Worrying while planning is a bad idea as well: it destroys your focus and can cause you to take an inordinate amount of time to come up with even a rough plan. Even worse however is worrying while you are trying to put your endeavor into action: it will undermine all the hard work you put into planning and make you doubt yourself when self-confidence is most important. It will cause you to make mistakes and use bad judgement, and will shatter your focus. Needless to say, doing all three at the same time is as destructive as all these effects combined.
For example, let's apply this to something as simple and commonplace as a mathematics exam. Planning corresponds to studying, worrying is, well, still just worrying, and executing is actually sitting down and taking the test. If you neglect to study, there's a good chance you'll fail (assuming you're an average student). If you neglect to worry, you'll become cocksure and probably neglect to study. If you neglect to execute, well, you haven't taken the test and will therefor automatically fail. If you worry and study at the same time, your focus will be shattered and you won't get nearly as much out of the studying as you might have otherwise. If you worry whilst taking the test, your focus will be shattered and you'll run out of time while constantly weighing options over in your mind, unsure of your knowledge. Studying while taking the test is logically forbidden in this scenario, but you can see how it wouldn't work out well.
The other hidden piece of advice in this statement is perhaps even more intriguing than the statement as a whole: that worry and self-doubt are not only essential, but good. Worry and doubt are the great sparks of planning, their predecessor. Without worry, it is easy to imagine that one would not feel compelled in the least to go to any great lengths planning their endeavor. Without doubt, one would feel no reason to go through the cycles of reconsidering and refactoring that, while potentially time-consuming, inevitably result in a better and more refined product than would otherwise be produced.
Since receiving it, I've taken this advice to heart - and would have been a fool not to. I may never recall who to credit for the amazing counsel above, but notwithstanding I thank them for saving me from myself. The overlap of worry with planning and executing was the primary concern for myself, and since the moment when I came to grasp the implication of that overlap, I've resolved to banish worry from my mind whenever I'm planning for or acting on an endeavor. The effects are noticeable as well. I have more concentration and drive when working on my robot arm, or taking a test, or writing an essay like this one. Perhaps that's what makes this advice so valuable in my mind: I've seen it work first-hand.
PROMPT: What is the best advice you ever received and did you follow it?
In any endeavor, there are three crucial phases: planning, worrying, and executing. Each is absolutely essential, and although their order and duration may vary, omitting a single one of them is sufficient to ensure your failure. That isn't the real danger though. The thing that derails more endeavors than anything else is allowing any two of the three to overlap.
This was a piece of advice that I heard somewhere in my sophomore year, and for the life of me I couldn't tell you where I heard it. Regardless, I've found it to be one of the most profound and unexpected truths I've ever heard, and it's had a massive impact on my life, particularly upon how I've approached projects and problems. Keep in mind that the terms above are used loosely: "planning" could be literally drawing schematics for a robot arm, or it could be studying for a challenging test.
You see, early in life I (and many other people I knew) had approached most endeavors in a totally ineffective manner. Often times I would find myself worrying about an endeavor while I was in the process of laying out initial plans. Frequently I would begin worrying about the outcome of a project while in the midst of essaying it. Sometimes I would utterly neglect to plan for an endeavor, or - worse still and infinitely more embarrassing - find that I had lacked the courage to even attempt it. All of these activities were, as I realized midway through sophomore year, completely contrary to the advice I had just received. The most astonishing part about the whole epiphany was that it made immediate sense.
The first two parts of the counsel are intuitive: there are certain steps to go through to complete an endeavor, and failing to do one will nearly always cause you to fail. The third is less obvious, yet it makes sense when thought about. Consider the combinations. Planning while simultaneously executing is a disaster - it's fairly equivalent to entirely neglecting the planning phase. It is flying by the seat of your pants and succeeding through nothing but instinct and prayer (or more likely just falling on the seat of your pants). Worrying while planning is a bad idea as well: it destroys your focus and can cause you to take an inordinate amount of time to come up with even a rough plan. Even worse however is worrying while you are trying to put your endeavor into action: it will undermine all the hard work you put into planning and make you doubt yourself when self-confidence is most important. It will cause you to make mistakes and use bad judgement, and will shatter your focus. Needless to say, doing all three at the same time is as destructive as all these effects combined.
For example, let's apply this to something as simple and commonplace as a mathematics exam. Planning corresponds to studying, worrying is, well, still just worrying, and executing is actually sitting down and taking the test. If you neglect to study, there's a good chance you'll fail (assuming you're an average student). If you neglect to worry, you'll become cocksure and probably neglect to study. If you neglect to execute, well, you haven't taken the test and will therefor automatically fail. If you worry and study at the same time, your focus will be shattered and you won't get nearly as much out of the studying as you might have otherwise. If you worry whilst taking the test, your focus will be shattered and you'll run out of time while constantly weighing options over in your mind, unsure of your knowledge. Studying while taking the test is logically forbidden in this scenario, but you can see how it wouldn't work out well.
The other hidden piece of advice in this statement is perhaps even more intriguing than the statement as a whole: that worry and self-doubt are not only essential, but good. Worry and doubt are the great sparks of planning, their predecessor. Without worry, it is easy to imagine that one would not feel compelled in the least to go to any great lengths planning their endeavor. Without doubt, one would feel no reason to go through the cycles of reconsidering and refactoring that, while potentially time-consuming, inevitably result in a better and more refined product than would otherwise be produced.
Since receiving it, I've taken this advice to heart - and would have been a fool not to. I may never recall who to credit for the amazing counsel above, but notwithstanding I thank them for saving me from myself. The overlap of worry with planning and executing was the primary concern for myself, and since the moment when I came to grasp the implication of that overlap, I've resolved to banish worry from my mind whenever I'm planning for or acting on an endeavor. The effects are noticeable as well. I have more concentration and drive when working on my robot arm, or taking a test, or writing an essay like this one. Perhaps that's what makes this advice so valuable in my mind: I've seen it work first-hand.
