Your advantage.

I really find these articles motivating and inspiring; I hope you don't mind me sharing them with you.
Regards,
M.

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The Advantage You Have Over Every Other Up-and-Comer in Your Company
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By Michael Masterson

In terms of productivity, employees fall somewhere on a bell-shaped curve.
At the bottom of the curve are the loafers and goof-offs. In the middle is the silent majority that does just enough to get by. At the top are the relative few who are motivated to achieve.

When you understand the dynamics of any such group, you understand that a modest amount of hard work will put you beyond both the terminally slothful and the lump-along middle crowd. Just by being modestly ambitious, you will rise to the top third of almost any organization.

But getting up the last few rungs of that ladder will be tough, because the few you are competing against are competing hard. Chances are, they are as smart and talented as you, with the same (or more) basic resources. They may even have better contacts. But there is one thing they don't have more of, and that is time.

If you can use your time more effectively than they use theirs, you will move ahead of them. Hard workers eventually succeed even against those who have advantages. You can do better than someone who is smarter, richer, and luckier than you - so long as you are willing to work harder than that person does.

[Ed. Note: This article was adapted from Michael Masterson's book, Automatic Wealth for Grads... and Anyone Else Just Starting Out, one of Amazon's Top 10 Finance and Investing Books of 2006.]