"To do something that you feel in your heart that's great, you need to make a lot of mistakes. Anything that's successful is a series of mistakes"-Billie Joe Armstrong

To be successful, you must learn to work smart, and work hard. Working smart means making a plan and working hard means working the plan. That relates to what we talked about in INQ about taking initiative. In order to be successful, you must take action. Whether it’s with your professor in college or in your college classes or if it with your boss, when you have a great idea and know you deserve credit or a raise for it. Life is all about taking action, and chances, and those risks will help you become successful. To also be successful, you must keep your mind on your work and stay focused. In the article, ‘Debunking the Myth of Multitasking’, the author talked about how multitasking can affect your productivity. Many students do their homework while watching television, or listening to music. While they may think it helps them concentrate, and I will admit, I have said that music helps me concentrate, it really throws you off. I never actually thought about it until reading this article, and then when I tried to get some homework done while listening to music, I found myself stopping periodically to sing out the lyrics to what I was listening to. Continually doing that, will not make my homework get done faster. See, the point is that some people, especially today’s youth, don’t understand what it takes to be successful. You can’t just make a plan and expect it to work right away. You have to work hard in high school to get into college, you have to work hard in college to graduate and get a good job, and even then you have to work hard to keep that job. To be successful, you must learn that you are going to make mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes, but not everyone learns from them. The people who work smart, and work hard learn from their mistakes and turn them into positives, that will help them on their way to success.