I studied in MES for my 12th. The college itself was a pool of talented people right from sports to academics, you name it for that particular age group.
But all my time went into flirting, movies, time pass, spending time on unwanted things, and having high aspirations while working zero towards them.

In fact, I even had a nickname: IIT, because I was aiming for IIT. But guess how much I scored in 12th?
70%. What happened? I was proven to be average.

Back then, my close friends and others got into good colleges because of their CET rank. But I somehow ended up using my quota to secure a decent not great college.
At that time, I used to think, I didn’t work hard. People who succeeded, worked very hard.
And they did.

Fast forward to my second semester of engineering I scored almost an 8 GPA. I was like, Damn, this much?
Then it struck me why did I score this much? Did I really put in that much hard work? No.
Then I thought, maybe being average gives you a lot of freedom.
So I decided to keep scoring between 7 and 8 in all semesters.
And I did.

It gave me a lot of freedom to be myself, and I had a wonderful college life.

Then came placements. I don’t know what struck me, but I decided not to sit for placements where mass recruiters were hiring.
I was sure I’d do something else, but I didn’t know what.
Eventually, I made a good judgment I joined an embedded institute.
After that, I got placed in a good company with a good salary.

Fast forward 10 years I might end up with some good numbers in terms of money, but I’m pretty sure hard work is not the reason.

Because people who worked hard are also in the same league.
So what am I really talking about?

Hard work is not that important.
Hard work is a great excuse for the mind when the ego comes attacking, asking, Why didn’t you make it?

Hard work gives us the ammunition to say, At least I tried. I didn’t sit on the couch, so I’m okay.

But in this capitalistic world, I don’t think there’s a strong correlation between the amount of time you put into work and how well you do.

Today, from my own learnings I work much less, I’m happier, and I have the opportunity to live more by first principles.

We should first think what we should be doing then decide how long we should do it.

Me and my friends always talk about Yash, Ganesh, and Rakshith Shetty because they have all the characteristics we admire in life.

Now, Yash decided to go pan-India with KGF once he saw the movie’s potential. He selected Prashanth, who had done only one movie.
For me, that’s good judgment.

Of course, once a movie gets onboard, most of the team works very hard to do justice to the role they’re playing.
But landing that role isn’t the fruit of hard work it’s the result of good judgment.

I remember in school days, Kannada actor Loose Mada used to give good movies back to back. I concluded that as luck.
Then he started choosing bad stories everything went down. Bad judgment led to the downfall of his career.

And we should spend as much time deciding what to do, as we do actually doing it.

Yash took almost 1.5 years to lock his next project after KGF that’s quality decision making time.

So, the question is: What is more important to succeed?

Punyakoti’s feels:
Good judgment beats hard work.