So often people use the excuse “it’s impossible” when they really mean “I don’t want to do this because it’s difficult”.
But this isn’t a new phenomena. German businessman Alfred Krupp wrote this to his employees in 1865 on how to best approach the problems that confronted his company at that time:
12/3/1865
Not pressing, only an incidental observation.
If I had not wanted to set to work until all arrangements were complete, I should today be a journeyman. To attain one’s end with the smallest means, to work and to earn without losing time, that is the task, and that is what I ccannot sufficiently recommend to you gentlemen as a the practical thing. To raise difficulties is is very comfortable, but to get over difficulties (without making a fuss about them) is what we need–time should be valued more highly.
Action and strenuous activity is the one remedy for excuses on the score of “impossibility”. It makes the impossible possible-the “impossible” is too readily recognized-as a matter of comfort.
Alfred Krupp
What keeps you from steadily working on those things which seem insurmountable? Why do we build tasks up in our minds to be too difficult to tackle?
David Curry
