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Sun Tzu: Thus it is that in war the victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory.
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The alternative to hard work is hard decisions.
Hard work is absence of strategy. Or rather, it is an avoidance of strategy. I am working hard because I am avoiding hard decisions. Instead of making decisions — about what is important and what isn’t, about what needs to be done now and what can be done later, what is and isn’t working — I am choosing to do everything.
I had a self-destructive pattern in college that illuminates this principle. At the start of every semester, I would look at the courses on offer, get interested in too many, and take more than I should. A month or two later, an oppressive load of assignments would prompt a crisis, in which I had to finally confront the decision I had put off in the first place: which courses mattered?I could either drop no classes, suffer the oppressive load of assignments, compromise on quality, get worse grades, and put my GPA in jeopardy, or I could drop classes, enjoy myself more, produce higher quality work, get better grades, and maintain my GPA.
In other words, I could either keep working hard or make hard decisions.
"Freeway" Rick Ross
- FreewayRickyRoss.com
- 20?? - VH1 - Documentary on the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s
- 2015.01.05 - YouTube - ReasonTV - "Freeway" Rick Ross on How He Introduced Crack to the U.S. and Made Millions Off the War on Drugs
- 2015.01.16 - HipHop DX - Freeway Rick Ross Offers Jail Advice To Bobby Shmurda
- “What I did with prison is I turned my prison cell into a college,” he said. “An old guy told me in prison, ‘You can get your college degree two places: you can get it at Penn State or the state pen.’ With my situation I found out that I was gonna wind up getting mine from the state pen. So I turned my prison cell into a university. I read over 300 books. By the way, I was totally illiterate when I went to prison, had never read a book. I read over 300 books before I left, I don’t know how many magazines, newspapers. I read the L.A. Times everyday. I read the Wall Street Journal everyday. I read the USA everyday. Sometimes I’d read the New York Times. I educated myself and I think that’s what he should do. By the way, I’m gonna give you my three favorite books, same books I sent to Boosie, if I get your address I’m gon’ send’em to you: The Richest Man In Babylon, Think And Grow Rich, and As A Man Thinketh. You can’t go wrong with them three books. If you take them principles they gon’ make your jail cell a lot easier.”
- 2015.11.16 - YouTube - Freeway Ricky Recalls Being Sold $70,000 Worth of Cake Mix
- He gives a really good description of how he got started. He was Basically he just went around and found a first customer, and that customer spread the word. So it was all word-of-mouth.
- He never drank alcohol, smoked cigarettes, smoked weed, or did any kind of drug before he got into selling, and except for a two-week period, never did any drugs after he started selling. He only tried using for a week or two and it drained his money so quickly that he vowed to never do it again.
- He says he had Nicaraguan suppliers vying for his business because he was more professional: he had the money, he wouldn't rip his suppliers off, and he wasn't a murderer.
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