Complacency
January 23, 2008
-Karthik Gurumurthy
I used to follow the game of chess back when I was in India. Viswanathan Anand, Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov were like the biggest stars during the time.
Yesterday I was in Barnes and Noble and stumbled into the book written by Garry Kasparov. The name of the book is Garry Kasparov: How Life imitates chess
I just browsed through the book and found some interesting nuggets from the book.
"Success is the enemy of future success. One of the most dangerous enemies you can face is complacency. I have seen- both in myself and my peers-how satisfaction can lead to a lack of vigilance, then to mistakes and missed opportunities. Success and satisfaction may be our goals, but they can also lead to bad habits that will impede greater success and satisfaction.
Gravity of past success. Winning creates the illusion that everything is fine. We think only of the positive result without considering all the things that went wrong.
Most of us are guilty of the same habit in our day-to-day lives. My advice regarding the old saying "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" should be left to the plumbing trade and never applied to how we lead our lives and at work when something goes right."
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