Is hard work the key to success? || Acharya Prashant, with youth (2014)

Question: Sir, everyone says that hard work is the key to success. Is this true?

Speaker: Rohit is asking that is hard work the key to success. Rohit, you have picked two entities and asked whether they can be equated.

You have said, ‘hard work’ and you have said, ‘success’. You are asking that are the two synonymous. Does one lead to the other? Is one guarantee to the other? Is the presence of one necessary for the presence of other?

How do I know whether ‘A’ equals ‘B’, when I neither understand ‘A’ nor do I understand ‘B’? You are asking me that is ‘A’ equal to ‘B’. I am asking you that what is ‘A’ and what is ‘B’. Let us understand that. Then it will be very easy to understand whether ‘A’ equals ‘B’.

What is hard work?

Work is of two kinds. One is the work that you have read of in your Physics book which is the expenditure of energy, the kind of work that you can measure in calories, joules and electron volts. It is the physical work. We are not to bothered about it because it is anyway happening all the time in nature. That physical work is mere energy and energy keeps getting converted from one form to another.