Cyril Parkinson was a British naval historian who had spent a large amount of his time with the British Civil Service. As a British staff officer in World War II, he observed the numerous inefficiencies caused by a large bureaucracy. Indeed, he noted that the British Colonial Office increased year after year even though the British Empire was in decline.
We judge ourselves and base our actions based on the present, but we should really be looking at the future. At any time, our life is on a trajectory that is trending either upwards or downwards — you are the one who decides where that goes.
The cost of an undisciplined approach to more is bigger than we think. Time and energy are our two biggest resources, but we constantly undervalue them. The time we invest into being good at one thing could be used to master our craft — bringing us to great.
What determines how far one will go in life? It’s a question that has been asked for ages, but it turns out that it has been answered numerous times already. Although it has come in many variants, the answer is conclusively related to one key trait: mental toughness.
The last Space Shuttle to be launched was the Atlantis, which went into orbit on 8 July 2011. During takeoff, the spacecraft burned 660,000 pounds of solid fuel per minute. Along with 17,000 gallons of liquid oxygen and 45,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen per minute, the launch consumed nearly as much energy as an individual would use in an entire year.