One morning, during the forum’s second week, we woke up partially feeling not wanting to live anymore and partially anxious about the upcoming adventure. A company called Accilium invited the club to an electric mountain bike tour. I have neither tried mountain bikes nor electric bikes before. Between nervousness and wanting to try something new, I found myself on the bicycle without having any idea about how to operate it. With some luck and a lot of intuition, I found my way up to the mountain, well after an acrobatic flipping once or twice. There are several modes for electric motor assistance: eco mode, standard mode, and high-power mode. Every mode provides the rider with a different level of assistance. Namely, the echo mode provides the least possible assistance and the high-power mode provide the most. The battery indicator shows how much percentage of power one has left and, more importantly, how much power was used to reach the destination.
All of us made it up to the mountain but not all of us used the same power. So, my first question to everyone was how much power is still left in your battery. Some people had 70%, some others 80%, and some very athletic people had over 90%.
I was thinking about whether that was the right question to ask. Some made it to the top without feeling tired and some other people were absolutely drained and couldn’t really enjoy the food or the session that took place afterward. So, is it really bad to use the assistance in this case? Is it more commendable or right to do it the hard way? Well, on one hand, if you don’t use the assistance system, you give yourself the possibility to improve. If you use the assistance, you might end up with a more pleasurable experience afterward.
The same analogy could be drawn for everyone’s state at the end of the forum or the end of study or at the end of some years of career progress. How much power you still have left in you? Did you choose the hard path and gave yourself an improving possibility or a lighter approach where you conserved your energy to explore other areas? What was the cost of choosing any of these approaches? Did you still have enough motivation to keep going or did you lose your resilience when facing new challenges? Unfortunately, there is no clear guideline. There’s no one correct approach for approaching challenges. The right thing to do stems from one’s self-knowledge and ability to predict the impact of each decision on one’s mental and physical state.
I guess the phrase “work smart, not hard” does not mean to avoid working hard at all. It just advises us to direct the hard work in a way that gives the best benefit at the lowest cost. It would not probably be worth it if one’s health got worse or reached a mental strain after a period of excessive work. On the other hand, one needs to make sure to continuously build stamina and resilience when facing challenges and never opt for the easiest approach when it is not the best way to go.
von Ahmed Hasaballah