Almost all of the great achievements of mankind came only after repeated trial and error, sometimes hundreds or even more trials. For example, it took Edison more than a thousand attempts to make the bulb, aryans 500 years to expand to subcontinent, humanity 700,000 years to make fire etc.
However, there is a fine line between this steadfastness and insanity as "Keep trying the same thing expecting different results" is still the definition of insanity.
In order to be persistent yet sane, a person do have to try again and again, but everytime change tactic a little, learn from mistakes, change sequence of steps etc. The idea is not to clone the effort, but to try different flavours of the same strategy.
Its worth mentioning that the strategy needs to be consistent, only the tactics needs to be continuously monitored and changed as per the day-to-day situation. If strategy changes then all the efforts made so far become irrelevant and one have to start again from zero, therefore strategy must be conserved. It goes without saying that strategy therefore must be made only after deep thought.
Note that when strategy is changed, efforts become irrelevant, not wasted. The difference is, in a later similar strategy, these efforts may be useful. Its like when R&D moth a project because of insufficient resources, then when research resumes on the project, one do not have to start from zero but can continue from the point things were paused.
There is yet a third thing: "not enough effort". It happens at times that a person is doing things with both right strategy and right tactic, but is simply not trying enough. Everything has a price, and often the price is a certain amount of effort or time, so a person have to stick to guns and keep firing till the castle falls. It do not matter whether a person change tactic or repeat exact same thing if he is simply not putting enough effort.
The telltale sign of not putting enough effort is giving up before the end, not completing the entire operation but quitting in between due to emotional exhaustation. One should let things go their natural course once effort is made, and patiently wait for the results. Sometimes failures are just bumps on the road and things are moving towards the goal. So patience too has its place.
Therefore one should begin with a strategy. The strategy needs to be simple, one-line sentence, and ifs must be avoided. Its OK to take time to make strategy because strategy needs to be comprehensive i.e. cover all cases. Examples of strategy are:
(1) "Europe first" by allied forces during world war 2. It simply means that the resources must focus on finishing war in europe first, before they be diverted towards the pacific theatre.
(2) "Tit for tat" in technology and arms, adopted by both soviet union and usa during the cold war.
(3) "Blood and iron" adopted by bismarck of german empire in 1880. The strategy was about fast industralization and waging wars to capture raw materials from neighbours.
(4) "Diversification" usually adopted by corporations. It means to develop new products to meet changed needs of markets. Its a viable strategy when for example due to technological advancement, the flagship product of company is getting decreased demand year over year and company cannot (due to lack of resources, patents etc) improve the flagship product. In this scenario, its better for company to develop a different product where it has more chances of success.
(5) "Retrenchment" adopted by empire or corporations when facing defeat. Its like when the outer wall of castle falls, the soldiers reposition on the inner wall, when that falls soldiers reposition at the keep. Sometimes there are so little chances of success at a wide front due to lack of resources or loss of some critical high ground, that its better to lose some ground to achieve better position and gain some stability and control. A corporation which in its boom days have expanded to several markets or products find hard later on to hold its position, can decide to shed off some product or market to focus on its core product or market where it has a better chance of survival.
(6) "Acquisition" adopted by corporations when facing competition. If you are a large company facing severe competition from an underdog whom you cannot defeat through product development or marketing, then its a viable option to buy the underdog. Being big you have resources to take over the little company and can digest it. Once you buy it, you can decide to shut it down to give your old product a better chance to prosper. Sometimes throwing money over problem is the fastest, easiest and at the same time best solution considering everything. Small cities in medieval times and even in classical antiquity (persians, greeks, romans) sometimes use a form of this strategy to avoid foreign invasions and subsequent plunders. Ofcourse they do not try to own the invaders, they just try to settle things down giving off some gifts. From the invader's point of view the benefit of gifts sometimes out-value the cost of sieging, fighting and capturing especially because the gifts can continue the next year and so on.
A strategy is built to last atleast for 5 years but may extend to a hundred years if overall scenario remains same. Strategy is also an empire-wide or corporation-wide affair, therefore it must take in account both current situation and expected change of events in time to come over all the units of empire/corporation.
Its important to have as many different point of views as one can muster from key sub-ordinates and friends.
Once a strategy is built and actual effort is started, one must give some flexibility to the commanders-at-front. As long as overall effort is moving in the right direction, its OK to change tactic on daily or weekly basis. If a tactic fails, and tactics fail more than they succeed, a different tactic must be used.
In between changing of tactic, one must not put aside the other two pillars of success: working hard enough, and patience. Like it takes a certain amount of energy to move a load up a cliff, and a certain amount of energy to shoot a rocket in space, there is a certain amount of energy needed to achieve a goal. While using a level or leveraging any other sweet spot, the amount of force (energy used per unit time) can be changed to some extent, the overall energy need cannot be changed. This is due to the second law of thermodynamics which is a fundamental law of universe and can never be broke. One can use a little force over a long period of time, or a large force over a small period of time, but the overall work (force x time) needed to gain something remains constant.
Enough effort must be put before anything can be achieved. No matter how comprehensive a strategy is, or how well tailored to situation the tactic is, no goal can be achieved if less than enough effort is poured.
Even if we have the first three pillars right: strategy, tactic, effort, we still cannot gain our goal if we are lacking enough patience. Putting effort in something is not enough, there is another factor, the factor of time. It takes a certain amount of time for energy used in effort to reach its target, then move things around, before effects can be seen. This is due to inertia, which is a fundamental property of matter. Things do not start moving as soon as they are pushed, they take sometime and during that time nothing moves. Once this time has passed the movement starts and things start getting rolled.
If things are not working out, then how can one be sure that the solution is just to wait a little more vs change of tactic/put-on-more-effort. The answer is to let events complete their cycle, do not quit in between. Its always a good idea to put a little more effort if one can muster more resources, but one should never change tactic before a cycle is completed. Let the effort reach the target then give it some time to react.
How can one know that a cycle has completed? At end of every cycle something big happens. For example in a marketing campaign, a cycle completes when end-user come to know about your effort, that is awareness reaches the usual percentage of your previous marketing campaigns. When you bang a ram on the castle, the cycle completes at each stroke when the door gets a swing, you hear a voice. If you are working against a competitor then its very easy to find when cycle completes, its when your competitor registers your efforts. The registration usually comes by a counter-attack from competitor but it can be other smaller things such as a complain (to you or to an authority), as a change of tactic by competitor, or simple retreat.
For every action there is a reaction. A cycle completes when reaction happens. Note that reaction do not happen immediately after action, due to inertia there is a passage of time before reaction happens. Its this passage of time during which you need to be patient. You should not change tactic before you see reaction. Its because you never know about the correctness of your tactic and amount of effort before you see reaction. If the reaction is no apparent crack in the wall then you have to try harder i.e. put on more effort because the thing is costlier than what you are putting in. If reaction is a crack then you are putting right amount of effort, you just have to put it for longer period of time, you do not have to take resources from other operations. If there is no crack in wall after a hundred cycles then your tactic is not working out, may be the wall is made of iron instead of concrete so your wooden ram is not enough. You have to change the tactic, i.e. try some other point on wall, or may be dig a tunnel. You still have to continue with your strategy of taking over the castle.
When applying for a job, it takes a substantial amount of time before your resume is visible to the employers among the pile of other resumes. May be you have chosen the right career (strategy), applying at right companies through right channels (tactic) and putting in right amount of effort (sending enough resumes), its just that due to inertia it takes time for your efforts to be fruitful.
While waiting patiently for your efforts to work, it not hurt to try in a little more effort, because it do not hurt anything, it just gives you better chances. If your resources have no other important uses, for example you are unemployed and therefore have lots of free time in hand, it do not hurt to learn something new in your field (putting in more effort).
