Welcome to the topic sentence of today's entry: There's a fine line between having your own pride and giving up too early. (For the future of one page long essays that get 'A' grades because teachers mark 'on criteria', you saw it here first on this page.)

I'm a proud guy and I'm proud not to admit it. Incidentally, I'm also a good liar because of my reluctance to tell lies.

Nifty one-liners aside, I've been recently pondering the question if it is worth it to go all out for something that you want, and come to think of it, if that question even exists at all as everything can be rationalized to how much you want something. i.e. If you don't really want something that badly then you will put in an appropriate amount of effort as befits the occasion but the more you want something the more effort you will put in. Hence there will be no more 'worth' to speak of as the amount of effort varies proportionally with the intensity of desire. For those physics buffs,


Of course K being merely inversely proportional to laziness is overly simplified and I wouldn't even put it on the graph if i wasn't too lazy to correct it. It does present a pretty picture though doesn't it?

Notice then, how actually getting what you want doesn't actually appear on the graph? Of course it is generally accepted that the more effort you put into something the more likely you will get it.

Of course there have been naysayers who say that those who try too hard will never get what you want, or the higher you climb the harder you fall. Factor in the oft quoted phase that 'you miss 100% of the shots you don't take' and you get:

This isn't a simple 1/x curve because the curve actually touches the Gi Axis. However it never touches the D Axis because there's no rule that states that if you want something really badly you will never ever get it. For this problem however, we will assume that it is a typical inverse curve.

From this I can thus obtain 2 solutions, of which only one will be correct, depending on how cynical you are(yet another variable. If I have to explain this one as well my head will explode).

E=D/K -----1 and C=LE-----2 Or C=L/E-----3

combining 1&2
C=LD/K-----4

Or


Combining 1&3
C=LK/D-----5


In words,
4: Chances of getting what you want = Luck X Desire / Laziness
5: Chances of getting what you want = Luck X Laziness / Desire

As can be seen from the resulting equations, Luck is the only sure-fire way of getting what you want. Because you can't know for sure which equation is correct, luck becomes the ONLY way of getting what you want: Chances of getting what you want = Luck(allsortsofnonsense).

If this doesn't make you feel more zen, then I don't know what will. Basically it is saying that the only thing that affects the chances of getting what you want is the chance of getting what you want.

And we all know who won.