Obstacle-d.

Suppose you receive results that are nowhere near your expectations - far below what you thought you deserved because of your effort you put in - does it mean that your efforts had been wasted, or was everything not worth your time and effort at all?

That's probably what's been going on my mind since yesterday afternoon after a friendly tap on the back, followed by a pretty much morale-shattering piece of news. There definitely has been a lot of self-consolation and also some self-reflection, and I guess it finally allowed me to pretty much face reality.

Maybe our expectations weren't justified, like how we tend to believe that we always deserve more than we actually get. And perhaps we thought too much of the amount of effort we put in - after all, we didn't quite work very effectively. That's all in the past and there isn't any reason to head back in that direction.

Well then, was it all worth what we did? It's a rather natural reaction to stand in utter shock and go, "what a waste of my time and effort, nothing gained at all". Think of it from another perspective: you shouldn't make judgements like this after it is all done. After all, the result is always a big unknown from the start, and evaluating effort versus results from the start is just pointless and senseless. After all, when the next assignment comes, you'd probably just go on and give your '100%' again anyway. But if you know that the results is going to be of a certain value to you from the start, then maybe it's wiser to estimate how much effort you'd put into whatever you are doing.

Battle lost, lesson learnt. I've got a lot more to do, and I'll just have to pull myself through this.