A lot of people want me to talk about the education that has had the most impact on them.
Sometimes, some small things in life are as important to our education as any systematic education, and these small things can have a huge impact.
Through them, I learned a lot of things that I couldn't learn in the classroom and in the lab and at work, and they helped me a lot to improve myself.
The picture comes from the Internet
In everything you do, do the last 1% well
When I was in high school, there was a sports day one year, and the students who didn't have a game had to watch the games as usual, and they were not allowed to go home without permission. But there wasn't that much service work to do, and not all the games were attractive, so a lot of people just slipped away and went back at the end of the day. One of my classmates and I slipped out of the school gate on a bicycle and ran to the campus of Peking University to play, and after playing by Weiming Lake for most of the afternoon, we felt that it was time to go back to school, so we rode back. When I arrived at the school gate, I found that the sports day had ended, and many students were on their way home.
I said to the classmate, "Now that we're gone, let's go home." ”
That classmate said something that I will remember for the rest of my life: "We have walked ninety-nine steps, why don't we finish the last step?" So we went into the campus and went back after we finished ordering. Since then, I have remembered that I must do the last step well.
In our lives, many people do things without taking the last step.
I was on a business trip in Beijing and needed to move from one hotel in Wangfujing to another in Guomao.
A friend volunteered to help me carry my luggage, and it took about half an hour to drive from his company to the hotel in Wangfujing, and then wait for me to load my luggage into the car and drive to Guomao, which took about half an hour. My hotel is on the north side of the Guomao Bridge, and he drove from west to east to the south side of the Guomao Bridge, and it may take 5 minutes to turn around and get me to the front of the hotel.
The friend was lazy and said, "I'm not going to go, can you cross the street by yourself?" "I said of course it was fine, and then he drove straight back to the unit. When I dragged my two suitcases to the hotel across the street, he called and said that it seemed a little uninteresting to leave me on the road. I immediately said that I had helped a lot, thank you very much.
However, if I were him, since I had already spent an hour and a half helping others, I might as well spend another 5 minutes turning around and getting people to their destination.
For the same effort, the harvest is far from the same
You may find that in daily life, most people are willing to start rather than finish, and they are too lazy to finish the last step after taking all the ninety-nine steps. This may be human nature, everything is almost fine, and I always feel that even if I don't do it, the last point has nothing to do with the overall situation, but the quality of things done in this way will be greatly reduced.
At work, this kind of person may have no problem completing ordinary work, but for those most important things, the leader may not dare to hand them over. These people may actually work just as hard as someone who has walked a hundred steps, but the accomplishments are far from what they accomplish.
At Google, we emphasize the quality of doing things "Made in Switzerland", which we call "Google Quality".
As you know, Made in Germany is known for its quality, and if you want to find a country with better quality than Made in Germany, it is Switzerland. Switzerland doesn't produce a lot of things, but if it does, it has to be the best it can be, because the country is so short of resources that quality can only win.
Because the quality is a little bit better than others, things are usually very expensive. Of course, the spirit of Swiss manufacturing is not limited to the Swiss, as many people who make the ultimate in goods do the same. Some people ask me if I buy luxury goods, which I do occasionally, but I don't use any luxury goods. I bought them because some things were so perfect that I bought them and admired them.
Many luxury goods are actually only 5% better than the average high-end goods, but for this 5%, people may spend two or three times more. That's what makes Swiss made.
Google may only be 5% better than its competitors in terms of product and engineering, but it is this 5% that makes users choose it, thus giving it several times more market share than other companies.
For the best results
Many young people complain to me that they can't afford to buy a house in Beijing. Indeed, for the average salaried person, it may be difficult to buy a house near the Fourth Ring Road for the rest of their lives according to current housing prices. I used to say that houses in Silicon Valley are not for ordinary company employees, because there are more people and fewer houses, and only those who are higher than others in all aspects are worthy of the right to own a house in the Silicon Valley area.
The same is true in cities such as Beijing today, where houses with relatively good locations in the future may only be for the 5% who are doing the best in their field, while houses in the best locations may be for the 1% of people.
Compared with the top 1% of people in the world, people who are doing reasonably well may be a few steps behind, but the final income level, social status, and development opportunities are very different.
Therefore, I sometimes say that doing things well, if not to make oneself appear good and noble, is at least to have a comfortable and convenient house. If each of us always keeps the words "Swiss Made" in mind, it may not be far away to own a dream home in Beijing or other first-tier cities.
To this day, on the one hand, I am very grateful to some of my classmates, who are not perfect, but have many shining points that have benefited me for life, and when I see these gaps, I can remind myself to improve myself. On the other hand, I would also like to thank my friends who did not do very well in the last 1% because they educated me from a different perspective.
John Henry Newman, a famous British educator, once said, "The best education should be for young people to live together and learn from each other." ”
In the past, it was very difficult to do this because people had to be physically together; But today, with the Internet, learning is much easier, and in such an environment, everyone's progress is extremely obvious, which once again validates Newman's point.
In fact, there is no shortage of all kinds of good friends around us, and with their help, we are one step closer to the best.
Source: "Insight"
Author: Wu Jun
Editor: Jing Chen
[Disclaimer: This number is the official public welfare account of "National Reading Promotion", and this article is reprinted for the purpose of conveying more information. If there is a source label error or other inaccuracies, please contact us. We will correct it in a timely manner. Thank you]