Be a SMART honey badger

Spotted an interesting article on LinkedIn talking about how great entrepreneurs are like honey badgers, being restless and relentless. Truly, I've seen this kind of people before too. Nothing can thwart them in their pursuit of passions. Literally NOTHING! Once they start, not only you cannot stop them, but also they themselves cannot call it a day, no matter how arduous and strenuous their doings are. If they encounter any problem (oh wait, not problem, this word is non-existent in their dictionary. They call it "challenge". ), they will try whatever they are capable of to either tackle it directly or circumvent it and come back to it later once they accumulate enough strength.

This is exactly what a honey badger does. According to the article written by Sarah Hodges, partner at Pillar Companies, if a honey badger is contained in a large, high, cement-walled enclosure in the wild, this is what it will do.

• It will immediately find out ways to open the wire fence and use its claws to break several locks holding the enclosure.

• Even if the locks are replaced, it will change its method by digging a hole under the wall to make a tunnel connecting to the outside.

• Okay, now you secure and close the hole it made, it will then collect heavy rocks and stack them up to reach the top of the wall and climb over.

• You desperately take out all the rocks it can use to make its staircase, it will then use mud to roll balls and stack them up to create a mud ladder and then climb out.

Precisely, nothing can stop a honey badger once it sets its mind.

Yes, you can say that it is smart. Its IQ is high enough for it to come out with various solutions to solve the problem. However, I want to disagree with it a bit. It is smart not in the way that it can generate new solutions that other animals cannot. It is smart in terms of its reaction to a problem, or even a problem with growing difficulties. And more importantly, it has the desire for freedom in the first place, then it acts smart. One thing I completely agree with the writer, to summarise the honey badger's behaviour in one sentence--It simply doesn't care.

Yes, it doesn't care. It doesn't care about what obstacle is in front of it. It doesn't care about whether it has sufficient resources to get itself out of the situation or not. It simply doesn't care about whether it will escape from the captivity or not, because it obstinately believes that it will. It only cares about its own dream, its desire for complete freedom. It only cares about what it possesses, the mud, the rocks, its sharp claws and teeth, its huge and strong body. It only cares about how it can use whatever it has to get what it wants. In that sense, it is not smart at all as it does not even bother to measure the difficulty of the problem before starting to tackle it. It never predicts what will happen after it makes a decision to do one action. It just does it, relentlessly. It just gives out whatever it has and tries out every single solution it can think of.

I don't think we should be like a honey badger. If so, we would undoubtedly tire ourselves up very quickly. Don't imitate what most of the millennials do. Don't put your full efforts in every single thing you do. Be smart. Be conscious. Estimate your true potential as well as the importance and difficulty of the challenges. Rank them before you start to tackle them one by one. Take a rest when you feel tired. Don't force yourself too much, otherwise the only benefit you will accrue will be a dropping productivity and an over-stressed stagnant mind.

So, don't be a normal honey badger, be a smart one! Growing enervated yet still cannot free yourself from the enclosure. No hurry. Lie down comfortably and let the sunshine rejuvenate yourself!

06 November 2016, 21:43

Li Yuxuan

#life #reflection #badger #honey #entrepreneur