Eureka , a word you heard of but have no personal significance. Its meant to exclaim a moment of enlightening and self discovery. I had my moment recently while playing badminton (badly) for more than a year and suddenly was able to guess the direction of the shuttle right before it was hit. Such a basic yet significant ability did not come naturally and no one could really “teach” that even though they tried.

Sadly though, for many (including myself) this is something that doesn’t happen often enough.

Living in the information age does have its disadvantages. Having access to information on your fingertips forms a habit of expecting quick fixes to your problems. This creates an environment where you know you could always find the answer online and negates the feeling of success or the eureka moment. Lack of such reinforcement creates a complacency and lack of drive in pushing through the difficulties of the learning process.

As explained by The Black Swan, we are conditioned to seeing progress in proportion to the effort put in. A builder would be motivated throughout the process of construction because he can physically see progress as effort is being put in. A researcher searching for the cure of cancer on the other hand might have nothing to show after 20 years of research and suddenly “gets it” the next day. The problem is uncertainty causes a mental torture (compounded by the people around you) that would break you down eventually.

Now that you realize the dynamics of the problem, you can now prepare yourself mentally when taking such an endeavor. The rest is just knowing when to quit and when to stick and plain perseverance.

Have you had an eureka moment lately?