Fable 3: Folding a piece of paper 51 times

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III. The fable of planning: Folding a piece of paper 51 times. Imagine you have a piece of white paper large enough. Now, your task is to fold it 51 times. So, how tall is it? A refrigerator? One floor? Or as tall as a skyscraper? No, it’s far too much – this thickness exceeds the distance between Earth and the Sun. 【Psychological Analysis】So far, I have asked this fable to more than a dozen people, and only two said it might be an unimaginably great height; the highest height that the others could think of was about that of a skyscraper. The height after folding 51 times is such **, but what if 51 sheets of plain paper are simply folded together? This comparison shocked many people. A life without direction or planning is like simply stacking 51 sheets of blank paper together. Do this today, do that tomorrow; there is no connection between one effort and another. In this way, even if each task is performed excellently, they are merely a simple accumulation in terms of your entire life. Of course, life is a bit more complex than this fable. Some people choose a simple direction for their lives and stick to it with determination; as a result, they reach heights that others can never attain. For example, a friend of mine has made English his life goal; he spent over a decade working hard, and his vocabulary size reached well into the hundreds of thousands, achieving a level that is beyond what most people can attain. There are also people who have a clear direction for their lives, such as starting a company and becoming its owner; in that case, they need many skills—professional skills, management skills, communication skills, decision-making skills, and so on. They might try to do this at first, then try that, without becoming particularly proficient in any one of them; but in the end, the path of starting a company and becoming its owner will bring together all those seemingly separate efforts from before. This is also a complex kind of life transformation, rather than a simple accumulation. Remember: visible forces are more useful than invisible forces. Now, it is popular to look for answers in invisible places, such as potential development or the science of success, believing that our lives can only be saved through some miracles. However, in my opinion, Mao Zhengqiang, a counselor at Dongguan Hengyuan Psychological Counseling Center, is more correct: \"It is far more important to make good use of existing abilities through planning than to seek out so-called potential.\" ”