"inaction is the enemy of progress "
I just made that quote up there and it's the reason am writing this post. I was introduced to Steemit a few months ago by an acquaintance (strength of the weak tie) . I did some research and decided to have a "feel" of the platform for a while. Why actually contribute when you can be smarter that everyone else and do some proper research?
So, every other day I came around, read and upvoted a few posts, rarely commented and greedily eyed my wallet waiting to see if my account value would finally get to a $1. My account finally got to a dollar after about a week and I had no more excuse, Steemit was obviously a great platform. Create value and well, get value.
With help from the steemnigeria community I wrote my introductory post and promptly returned to snoozeland. Today I received the authors reward for that post. The one major action I had taken on the steemit platform gave the most reward. It made it so clear that I made a bad choice returning to snoozeland.
Inaction is truly the enemy of progress.
"Don't live your life by another man's watch"
This quote is translated from the Yoruba language and when translated verbatim it's closer to "don't work by another man's time".
(it's funny how I started hearing this more as I getting older and trying to figure out my place in the world)
It's one of those quotes I believe to be absolute crap. I feel it's more of a "there there" for underachievement. Yes, truly you shouldn't work with another person's time, another famous quote "slow and steady wins the race",which is fairly equally misleading, strengthens the argument.
But it still doesn't mean that time is not moving. Whether you like it or not. Time is moving.
I sourced some of the motivation to write this post because I did the exact opposite of the quote. I stalked a slightly newer minnow and used his wallet value as a benchmark. I checked on him again today and it actually hurt to see the difference between our accounts since he started blogging after I did. But he put in more effort and duly reaped the reward.
Inaction is truly the enemy of progress.
But here is the paradox that makes me bipolar about quotes. Take the "don't work by another man's time" quote. It helped me write this post, but I am sure if I I live my entire life looking at what others have done that I have not, I would end up being very miserable.
The same goes for a lot of other quotes. The "you can't eat your cake and have it" tops that list for me. But I actually do love quotes and find them very useful in life. They are like little nuggets of wisdom. Tiny nuggets they are. So for all their artsy vagueness and conciseness that is so mesmerizing that also makes them so misleading.
So what do I do when I come across a nice quote; I take it with a pinch of salt.
“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”- Mark Twain