Answer Yourself! A blog by Sukhpreet Singh

Of course you need talent to achieve success. But what if you think you don’t have as much talent or experience to achieve your goals?

It took Steve Jobs and pool of talented team to create a buzz for iPhone and send the share price of Apple soaring by 7% in Jan 2007. It took a pool of talented engineers with decades of experience and numerous hours to design and produce iPhone. But it took only 500 hours for George Hotz – a 17 year old teen to be the first one to have unlocked the iPhone so that it can be used with any wireless network (not just AT&T) and send Apple’s share prices up by 3.2% on 24^th August 2007.

How could this have been possible? Was he more talented or experienced than the team of engineers at Apple? I doubt that. Only combination that can supersede talent is consistency and persistency backed by dominant desire. Dictionary.com defines ‘consistent’ as “constantly adhering to the same principles, course, form, etc.” and ‘persistent’ as “refusing to give up or let go; persevering obstinately.”

George bought an iPhone on 29^th June and unlocked it by 22^nd August. He spent over 500 hours to achieve this. That is over 10 hours/day working towards just a possibility in mind. He and his friends thrived on energy drinks to get through this period. So for consistently 50 days, he spent 10 hours every day on persistently googling and applying trial and error techniques to unlock the iPhone. The important point to note here is that the backbone for his consistent and persistent effort was a DOMINANT DESIRE – the starting point of all achievements. His dominant desire was to have an iPhone that he could use on his T-Mobile family plan. Simple? I don’t think so… every cell-phone literate human being in world wanted to use this “thing of beauty” – the iPhone on his or her wireless network. But very few had the desire dominant and strong enough to make that a reality. One of them, infact the first one was George Hotz.

Often we have trouble in working consistently and persistently towards achieving our goals - loose weight or start own business or get a professional degree etc. etc. Culprit, is usually the lack of strength in your DESIRE. To change the outcome, focus on changing the intensity of desire – how ‘bad’ do you want to achieve your goal; how hungry you are for success, how much does it hurt you for not being at your “destination” with passing day? Ignite your desire (pain or want) more and your work ethic will automatically reach a a level that is needed to achieve your goals.

Checkout George Hotz blog and read his 10 steps to unlock the iPhone. Great work George!!