Keep Spinning

Last Saturday, along with the team, I attended PAYM Awards 2017 and 21st CYC installation Ceremony at Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD). The food is real good with truffles (?!) mashed potatoes, chocolate fondue, macaroons, etc. I mean if you are not salivating now, you better had a better meal than this mate.

Anyways this is not the point. The point is YES, being someone who is highly competitive, I actually felt (just) a little salty after seeing other YECs bagging awards after awards and my team and I can only be clapping among the masses. Being in the YEC for 5 years, I (and my team) have our fair share of sacrifices and contributions. From all the family time we have missed out due to YEC events, sending out invitation emails to schools during A Levels period (Thank God I scored decently) to the period of stress building up to events. It is not that those award-winning YECs are undeserving of the awards. In fact, they too have definitely put in their own fair share of sacrifices and contributions and for that, I congratulate all award recipients (individuals or YECs) and felt really happy for them. So what is the big deal here?

Recently I have read this book “Good to Great – Jims Collins” and below is an excerpt from the book

“Picture a huge heavy flywheel and you are tasked to get it spinning. Pushing with great effort, after 2 or 3 hours, you get the wheel to spin a complete round. You keep pushing and it gets faster, it builds up momentum. Then at some point, breakthrough! the momentum of the wheel kicks in your favour.”

Now suppose someone came along and asked: “what was the one big push that caused this wheel to go this fast?” It’s just a nonsensical question! Was it the first push? second? some pushes may have been bigger than others, but it only reflects a small fraction of the entire effort”

More often than not, when we witness the success of others –  Lionel Messi in the sports arena, Simon Cowell in the music field or maybe Steven Spielberg in the filmmaking industry, it seems like an almost instantaneous breakthrough and they climbed to stardom overnight. But we have forgotten the hours of training Messi put in every single day; we have forgotten Simon Cowell and his failed record company and also completely forgotten about University Of Southern California (USC) School of Cinema Art’s rejection of Steven Speilberg’s applications (not one but twice!).

PAYM awards night on 7th January have made the successes of those award-winning YECs seems like an instantaneous breakthrough and paints the picture as if they have found the one size fits all magic winning formula. However, I have failed to realise the amount of sweat and tears these YECs have put in across years and for some, even decades. Jia Hao’s Facebook post says it all and below is an excerpt from his post.

“12 years as a YEC member, and 8 years of dedication building a YEC. 8 years ago, I was told our YEC was ranked in the bottom 10%, and had barely enough quorum to pass a meeting. From 3-4 man team, to a few dedicated members eventually a close knitted family. From nothing, to most improved youth club in 2014, and now the top youth club in 2017, it had not been an easy journey….”

For now let’s just focus on getting this flywheel spinning.