Behind Every Success There Is Unknown Effort and Sweat - Seeing Life Planning from Harvard Sayings

This post was extracted from my early NetEase blog. NetEase Blog is no longer operating, but looking back, these words are still quite interesting, so I decided to move them over as intact as possible. It is mainly kept as a record; after all, it is from a long time ago, so the quality of the writing, images, and links may all be affected.

This post was originally published on November 17, 2010. I was about 21 years old at the time and was studying in college.

I saw this article online and felt quite moved by it.

Perhaps this once again proves that behind every success by anyone, there is unknown effort and sweat.

Harvard teachers often give students this warning: if, after entering society, you want to be at ease at any time and in any situation, and receive the evaluation you deserve, then during your time studying at Harvard, you have no time to sunbathe.

As a world-renowned institution, Harvard University has cultivated many famous people, including 33 Nobel Prize winners, 7 U.S. presidents, and professional elites from all walks of life. What exactly makes Harvard a cradle of elites? What kind of spirit and ideas do Harvard students receive? These questions attract thousands upon thousands of people to search for the answers.

The 20 sayings on the wall of the Harvard library seem to have already given the answer. A few short words provoke deep thought and offer enlightenment.

The twenty sayings of the Harvard library:

1. If you nap now, you will dream; if you study now, you will realize your dream.
2. The today I waste is exactly the tomorrow prayed for by those who died yesterday.
3. When you feel it is already too late, that is precisely the earliest time.
4. Do not put today's matters off until tomorrow.
5. The pain of studying is temporary; the pain of not learning is lifelong.
6. For studying, it is not a lack of time, but a lack of effort.
7. Happiness may not be ranked, but success must be ranked.
8. Studying is not all of life. But since you cannot even conquer one part of life -- studying -- what else can you do?
9. Please enjoy the unavoidable pain.
10. Only by working earlier and harder than others can you taste success.
11. No one succeeds casually. It comes from thorough self-management and perseverance.
12. Time is passing.
13. The saliva flowing now will become tomorrow's tears.
14. Study like a dog, play like a gentleman.
15. If you do not walk today, you will have to run tomorrow.
16. Those who invest in the future are loyal to reality.
17. Level of education represents income.
18. Once a day is over, it will not come again.
19. Even now, your opponents are still turning pages.
20. No hardship, no gain.

·If you nap now, you will dream; if you study now, you will realize your dream
Harvard teachers often give students this warning: if, after entering society, you want to be at ease at any time and in any situation, and receive the evaluation you deserve, then during your time studying at Harvard, you have no time to sunbathe. A saying widely circulated at Harvard is, "After finishing the autumn harvest, hurry to the autumn planting: study, study, and study again."
A person's time and energy are limited, so you must use time to hurry and study, rather than spend all your spare time napping.
Some people might say: "I am only napping in my spare time. Why make myself so tense during spare time?" Einstein once said: "The difference between people lies in their spare time." A friend of mine who teaches at Harvard also told me that as long as you know how a young person spends his spare time, you can predict that young person's future.
At the beginning of the 20th century, there was such a difficult problem in mathematics: whether 2 to the 76th power minus 1 was the prime number people guessed it to be. Many scientists worked hard to conquer this mathematical challenge, but the results were not as hoped. In 1903, at the New York Mathematical Society, a scientist named Cole successfully proved this problem through convincing calculations.
Amid people's surprise and praise, they asked Cole: "How much time did you spend proving this topic?" Cole answered: "All the Sundays over 3 years."
Likewise, the Canadian medical educator Osler was also a model of making achievements by using spare time. Osler's greatest contribution to humanity was the successful study of the third type of blood cell. In order to squeeze out time for reading from his busy work, he required himself to read for 15 minutes before sleeping. No matter how late and busy he was, he kept this habit unchanged. He kept this habit for a full half century, read more than 1,000 books, and achieved remarkable results.

·The today I waste is exactly the tomorrow prayed for by those who died yesterday
William Osler, founder of the world-famous Johns Hopkins institution, chair professor at Oxford University's medical school, and knighted by the British king, also once felt confused about his future when he was young. Once, while reading, he saw a sentence that greatly inspired him. The sentence was, "The most important thing is not to look at the vague things in the distance, but to do the clear things at hand."
Regarding this, Harvard reminds students: "The today I waste is exactly the tomorrow prayed for by those who died yesterday." No matter how beautiful tomorrow may be, it is not as good as seizing today in front of you and doing more practical things.
Benjamin Franklin, inventor and scientist who received an honorary degree from Harvard University, once received a phone call from a young person asking for advice, and arranged a time and place to meet him. When the young person arrived as agreed, Benjamin's door was wide open, but the house before his eyes was messy and in total disorder, which surprised the young person.
Before he could speak, Benjamin greeted him: "Look at my room, it is too untidy. Please wait outside the door for one minute. I will tidy it up, and then you can come in." Then Benjamin gently closed the door.
In less than one minute, Benjamin opened the door again and warmly invited the young person into the living room. At this time, another scene appeared before the young person's eyes -- everything in the room had become orderly, and there were two poured glasses of red wine, rippling slightly in a faint fragrance.
The young person, still surprised, had not yet told Benjamin the questions about life and career that filled his stomach when Benjamin very politely said: "Cheers! You may leave."
Holding the wine glass, the young person froze at once and said with a trace of embarrassment and regret: "I have not yet asked you for advice…"
"These… are they not enough?" Benjamin said while smiling and scanning his room. "You have been in here for another minute."
"One minute…" the young person said thoughtfully. "I understand. You have made me understand the profound truth that in one minute, many things can be done and many things can be changed."
Cherishing every minute and every second in front of you is also cherishing the today you possess. Harvard's sentence actually reveals a philosophy of life: life should grasp time with an attitude of cherishing, beginning from today, beginning from now.

·When you feel it is already too late, that is precisely the earliest time
Ammann was once an engineer at the New York Port Authority. After working for many years, he retired according to regulations. At first, he felt very disappointed. But he soon became happy, because he had a great idea. He wanted to start his own engineering company and open offices in every corner of the world.
Ammann began implementing his plan step by step. The buildings he designed were spread all over the world. In the more than thirty years after retirement, he practiced the bold and novel designs he had had no chance to try during work, constantly creating one classic after another that drew the world's attention: the airport in Addis Ababa, capital of Ethiopia; Washington Dulles Airport; Iran's highway system; the downtown building complex in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania… These works were used as common examples in university architecture and engineering textbooks, and were also testimony to Ammann's great dream. At age 86, he completed his last work -- the world's longest suspension highway bridge at the time, the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge in New York.
In life, many things are like this. If you are willing to begin, recognize your goal, and make up your mind to do something, it is never too late.

·If you do not walk today, you will have to run tomorrow
At Harvard, professors often remind students to manage time well, and list examples like the following:
Crawford Greenewalt, president of DuPont, today's largest chemical company in the world, squeezed out one hour every day to study hummingbirds and used special equipment to photograph hummingbirds. Authorities called the book he wrote about hummingbirds an outstanding work among natural history series.
Hugo Black had not received higher education before entering the U.S. Congress. From his busy schedule he squeezed out one hour every day to go to the Library of Congress and read widely, including books on politics, history, philosophy, poetry, and other fields. He kept this up for years, and never interrupted it even on the busiest days of congressional work. Later he became a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
A Greek elevator repairman named Nicholas was very interested in modern science. Every day after work and before dinner, he always spent one hour studying books on nuclear physics. As knowledge accumulated, an idea leapt into his mind. In 1948, he proposed a plan to build a new type of particle accelerator. This accelerator was cheaper to build and more powerful than other types of accelerators at the time. He submitted the plan to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission for testing, and after further improvements, this accelerator saved the United States 70 million dollars. Nicholas received a reward of 10,000 dollars and was hired to work at the Radiation Laboratory of the University of California.
On the road of life, you stop moving forward, but someone else is desperately hurrying along. Perhaps when you are standing still, he is still behind you chasing forward, but when you look back again, you can no longer see him, because he has already run ahead of you, and now you need to chase him. So you cannot stop. You must keep moving forward and keep surpassing.

·Study like a dog, play like a gentleman
We say we must cherish time and work hard to realize our ideals, but there is one point to pay attention to: do not blindly throw yourself into desperate effort; you must also have appropriate rest and relaxation. On this point, Harvard has a very fitting phrase called "study like a dog, play like a gentleman." Although the words are slightly crude, the principle they reveal is very profound.
At Harvard, although the study intensity is very high and students bear great academic pressure, they also do not advocate students using all their time for studying. They believe that one should study with all one's effort, but play should not be ignored either. Harvard students also say that Harvard's extracurricular life surpasses formal study. Harvard also realizes that appropriate extracurricular activities not only do not go against the educational mission, but also support it. Therefore, they propose playing "like a gentleman."
At Harvard, besides intense study, students also participate in many kinds of artistic activities organized by the school, such as concerts, theater performances, dance performances, and various art exhibitions. In addition, Harvard holds an arts festival every year to enliven students' spare time. These activities filled with a strong artistic atmosphere not only allow students to receive artistic education and cultivation, but also improve their artistic cultivation and aesthetic ability.
Harvard's idea is to require you, after intense study and work, to be able to temporarily and completely forget them, and to devote yourself to play as fully as you devote yourself to work, relaxing to your heart's content. Indeed, when you rest wholeheartedly, the recovery of physical strength and energy you gain will add endless motivation to the next stage of struggle. So on the road forward, you must not only work diligently, but also learn to relax.

·The saliva flowing now will become tomorrow's tears
Success and ease cannot both be obtained. If you choose one, you must give up the other ending. Just as Harvard reminds: the saliva flowing now will become tomorrow's tears. If you do not work hard today, you will certainly suffer tomorrow.
My neighbor Charles once spent 4 years of university life at Harvard. He now works at a software company in New York, doing the administrative management work he is best at, Jiujiu Readers. Not long ago, his company was merged by a French company. On the day the merger contract was signed, the company's new president announced: "We will not casually lay off employees, but if your French is too poor and causes you to be unable to communicate with other employees, then no matter how high your position is, we will have to ask you to leave. This weekend we will conduct a French exam, and only those who pass can continue working here."
After the meeting, almost everyone rushed to the library. Only then did they realize they had to hurry and make up French. Only Charles went straight home as usual. His colleagues all thought he had already prepared to give up this job. After all, his Harvard educational background and management experience in the company would help him easily find another good job.
However, what no one expected was that after the exam results came out, this person whom everyone thought had no hope actually received the highest score. It turned out that after Charles graduated and came to this company, he found in his work that there were especially many opportunities to deal with French people. Not knowing French would greatly limit his work, so he had begun teaching himself French very early. He used every bit of available time and persisted in studying every day, finally learning something.
At Harvard, you never see students being lazy or wasting time. When, many years later, you think back to the dreams you once had, may what they bring you be endless comfort and smiles, not tears of regret shed because of wasted time.

·Those who invest in the future are loyal to reality
As a world-famous institution, Harvard strongly emphasizes having long-term vision and investing in the future. To invest in the future, you must set the direction of future investment, which means setting life goals early. Without goals, there can be no development, let alone success.
Harvard University once conducted a follow-up survey on a group of young people whose intelligence, education, environment, and other conditions were similar. The survey found: 27% of people had no goals; 60% had vague goals; 10% had clear but relatively short-term goals; the remaining 3% had clear and long-term goals.
In the years afterward, they walked their respective roads in life. 25 years later, Harvard again followed up with this group of students. The result was this:
The 3% who had worked unremittingly in one direction over 25 years almost all became successful people in all sectors of society, including many industry leaders and social elites; the 10% continuously achieved their short-term goals and became professionals in various fields, mostly living in the upper-middle levels of society; the 60% lived and worked steadily, but had no special achievements, and almost all lived in the middle-lower levels of society; the remaining 27% had no goals in life, lived unhappily, and often complained about others, complained about society, and of course, also complained about themselves.
In fact, the only difference between them was: 25 years earlier, some of them already knew what they most wanted to do, while others were unclear or not very clear. This survey vividly illustrates the importance of clear life goals for success in life.