> Plenty of people worked as hard as they did Right, and one mustn't ever expect this to matter on its own. It's necessary but not sufficient. As you allude to

> Plenty of people worked as hard as they did Right, and one mustn't ever expect this to matter on its own. It's necessary but not sufficient. As you allude to, it's a vector - there's magnitude of work, and direction. Neither on its own is enough, you must have both aligned. I think this is one of the more important things a successful academic career doesn't teach you. There, the correct direction for achieving success is almost entirely set for you, so all you need to focus on is magnitude of hard work. More or less, working harder directly translates to more success. When you have to choose your own direction of work, this can be a counter productive takeaway because overly prioritising magintude of work can mean you don't focus enough on direction. Put another way, you have to work hard, but also occasionally have to step back from the work you're doing, take a look around and get the bigger picture, and decide if you're actually working on the right thing right now.