About Persistence and Repetitive Tasks

"We Are What We Repeatedly Do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."

Aristotle

Many people misunderstand the meaning of the term "persistence" and tend to confuse it with "repetition".

Other people consider repetitive tasks as a demotivation-determining factor, especially when they are talking about employees and job descriptions.

I am not sure that repetitive tasks have necessarily to be considered as a curse; all the while in most jobs they are necessary too.

Our grandparent knew that repetition in hand labour was something mystic and honourable.

By the way most religions say that "work ennoble man" and even they sanctify it.

Nevertheless I would point out that this has nothing to do with technology, modern ways of life and productivity matters.

I had a colleague for a long while, about 25 years, in my previous organisation, a data-keeping and data processing small business.

Our firm was pretty well reputed and appreciated from our customers.

I was the only responsible, while he was indeed my associate but without firm-level responsibility (I did prefer to name him 'colleague')

For example my colleague did prefer repetitive tasks rather than have to modify habits and change all the time ways to do his job.

I did prefer, on the contrary, to continuously study how to change and improve ways of doing things inside our organisation, to raise efficiency, quality and productivity of our performances.

What I learned from this experience? Both we were right!

Simple and vain repetition of tasks is not enough to improve and to succeed in a modern, competitive environnement.

But if repetition, diligence and punctuality are joined with creativity and a strong desire to succeed and to excel, then, this is Persistence.