Effort and Ability

         A while ago, I had a debate with my friends about effort and ability. I argued that effort is more important. My friends argued that ability is be important. I have to admit that ability is probably more important in the professional sense. That is partly because there is no quantifiable way to measure effort while there are plenty of ways to measure ability (test scores, GPA, achievements, etc). Besides, even if you have all the effort in the world but could not succeed, you will not be able to succeed in the current state of society. The reason people with effort thrive is because effort correlates with ability. The basic theory is that the more effort we put in, the greater our ability becomes. It is because of this interlocking relationship, that it is hard to debate for the merit of either. Effort itself can be an ability. I thought about this for a while and it seems that professionally, ability is preferred. But what about philosophically?

            Consider this. The man with the greatest ability in everything and the man with the greatest effort to do anything die at the same time. Because of their supernatural abilities that defy humankind, God condemns them to do a repetitive task: roll a boulder up a mountain for eternity (I know I’m ripping off the Myth of Sisyphus, but hear me out). Now, because the man with ability was born with natural talent, he never had to do anything with effort. On the opposite side, the man with effort rarely becomes good at anything yet he has an unbreakable resolve.

When tasked with the same task, the man with ability finished the task easily. In fact, he barely broke a sweat. However, the boulder soon fell down towards the feet of the mountain and the ability man walked back down to repeat his task. While the able man had already completed his task the first time, the man with effort could barely move the boulder further than three meters. By the time the able man finished pushing up the boulder the fourth time, the man with effort was still in the same place. He became so tired that the boulder fell back down on its own.

A few thousand years passed and the able man became bored. This task was too easy and he lost count of how many times he had already completed this task. When he realized how long eternity really is, he started to dread. Nothing was a challenge to him. He could already do everything. Yet there was no challenge for him. For eternity. In the meanwhile, through numerous trials over the past thousand years, the effort man was able to get the boulder halfway up the mountain. He never reached the top, but he had come far. Even at this point, an improvement of one meter was exhilarating.

The reason we feel “in the zone” in anything is because our ability matches the challenge. We start to lose track of time as our effort is mobilized to meet its demand. I know I am distorting the argument a lot, but it seems very interesting to me. The question becomes “what do you do when you have achieved everything?” When you are able to become the best in something, you probably don’t have to put in the effort anymore. Will you be bored then? 

At least for me, effort matters more than ability because of an emotional reward that comes with seeing an improvement, regardless of magnitude. The process becomes more important than the result. The result will only exist to inform the process. Philosophically speaking, then, if I could choose to be the man of ability or the man of effort, I would probably still be rolling up the boulder right now, sweat flowing endlessly down my brows and cheeks. Yet there will be a smile: one that cannot be wiped off along with the sweat.