What is the formula of success?

  

The motivation for writing this article is Fort Minor’s song “Remember the name”. Is there any composition of attributes /skills/qualities that are required to become successful? If we assume that if people remember your name, it means you are successful, then according to that song they have said following compositions will work fine:

“Ten percent luck, Twenty percent skill, Fifteen percent concentrated power of will, five percent pleasure, fifty percent pain, and a hundred percent reason to remember the name”

Do you agree with those compositions? Or do you have a different composition according to you?

Anyways, let us forget about the song and we should focus on our main discussion that what is the recipe of being successful. Even if we want to make a cup of tea, which is considered to be the simplest item to be cooked after the ban on Maggi in India, we need to have a proper mix of ingredients of tea. Similarly is there any recipe for being successful? Before we come to any conclusion, Let us analyze the recipe or formula for being successful.

Define Success

Before analyzing the formula of success, you should define it first. This is the first and major step towards attaining success.  If you do not know it, how can you achieve it? There is a tip which should be followed while defining success.

Always ask yourself what makes you happy and define your success accordingly. Success should make you happy in long run (not in short run). Few people define their success for short run, but they end up crying at later stage.  If you don’t want it to happen always keeps long term perspective in your mind.  Moreover, your strengths should be the main requirement of the project. This step is analogous to what we want to cook. Let us assume that we want to prepare tea.

Customization of strategy

This is the second step of being successful. One size does not fit all. Similarly, the same strategy may not work for two different people even though they are targeting the same goal.  In other words, everyone should customize their strategy according to their personal factors. These person specific factors could be their own preferences, competency level, style of working, etc. For reference, you can use the strategies that have been followed by successful people of the area in which you want to be successful.

Going by the same analogy of preparing tea, you can follow the strategy which is followed by your mother or grandmother or aunt. But you are always advised to change the mix of ingredients according to your preferences. In this step we will be deciding which pot to be used?  Whether to use Gas stove or to use Oven?

Qualities to become successful

What should we have to achieve the goal? Even the layman knows we should have qualities such as ability to work hard, ability to focus, ability to improve, honesty, sincerity etc. but what should be the mix of qualities. There are few jobs which require hard work whereas there are few jobs which require smart work.  Suppose there are two persons Ram and Krishna, they want to become Professor and Stock Broker respectively.  In this scenario, Ram will be having ample amount of time to come up with the solution to hard research problems, whereas Krishna will have to perform tasks in a very short period of time. The quality requirement for Ram is to solve hard research problems and Krishna should be fast enough to take decisions quickly. Hence, which quality to focus will depend on the nature of job.As we have limited time, we should have a proper time management technique to improve the quality of self. Which quality to be focused? This depends on the nature of the project in which you want to succeed and the quality in which you are lacking. 

In case of tea, once we have decided that we want to use gas stove, then will the quality of gas stove be the determining factor for the taste of tea? Yes!  Of course, all the qualities of the gas stove such as quality of the flame coming out of it, regulator, stand on which pot is kept plays role. In this analogy quality of the gas stoves are generally same, that’s why it does not make much difference, but in the case of humans this plays the major role as we have significant differences.

We can also consider quality of tea such as sweetness, temperature and taste analogous to the human qualities.

The Execution

This step is the last and most important step. If you have your goal set and also you have the strategy, what are you waiting for? Just pull the trigger and hit the target.  Until or unless you will light the gas stove, you cannot taste the tea which you are dreaming of?

Final Remarks

Success does depend on a lot of factors. Fortunately, we have control over most of the factors which affect it. Which factor to focus more depends upon the nature of the job which you have taken.  As in the case of tea, we always have sweetness, hotness and taste as the basic qualities of it. Ginger, Cardamom etc. are additional features to be added in the tea. Similarly we have few traits to be successful which must be possessed by the person who is aspiring to be successful, they are explained by Richard St. John in his ted talk. They are Passion, Work, Focus, Push, Idea, Improve, Serve and Persist. He has also written a book on them. There is another beautiful book called “seven habits of highly effective people”. You can refer that for qualities required to improve the probability of success.

You are always welcomed to comment on this blog and share your views.

Thank You!