"Success, remember, is the result of toil." Sophocles: Very Successful Greek Playwright.

It’s not just who you know. And it’s not just the luck of the draw. The wisest people have always acknowledged that success ultimately comes from hard work. First, the mental work necessary to establish an appropriate goal, along with a planned path to that goal, and then the ongoing work, mental and physical, necessary to implement that plan consistently yet adaptively in pursuit of your goal.

The modern paradigm of success tends to revolve around the apparent magic of the right idea galvanizing the right people at the right time. Before you know it, there’s an investor and a startup company, then suddenly an IPO, and everybody’s buying expensive new cars to fill up the 6 garage bays in their recently purchased mansions. But behind nearly every tech startup magic story in modern times, there's a tremendous amount of that ancient activity: toil. 

The lubricant of success is the oil of toil. It always has been. It always will be.

There's no way around it. You may one day win a lottery without it, but you’ll never enjoy any form of true success except as the result of it. But that’s no problem. Toil and pride go side by side. Yeah, it rhymes. Say it. Sing it. And remember it.

Today.