THIS is what no one told you about becoming successful: what you attempt to do might be twice as important as what you accomplish. And that is not an aphorism I just concocted.

You might be familiar with the 70-20-10 rule: it summarises the fact that 70 per cent of our learning and development takes place on the job or through real life experiences; 20 per cent through relationships such as mentoring and coaching, and a mere 10 per cent through classes or other traditional learning mediums.

Note: This, by the way, is a pretty neat yardstick to assess the effectiveness of your development plan. Note it down somewhere!

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What you might not be aware of is the growing body of knowledge that suggests that real growth and learning occurs when we are at the edge of our comfort zone. Morgan McCall, who has been at the heart of this research, uses this charming allegory to illustrate the point in his book, High Flyers: The Next Generation Of Leaders:

A frog fell into a deep rut in a dirt road not far from his pond. Wagons had passed along this road in the deep mud left by heavy rain, leaving a now hardened and cavernous -- to a frog -- rut that this particular frog was unable to hop out of.

After numerous tries and several creative efforts, the frog gave up and sat in the rut, exhausted. After a while the frog's friends and family became worried and began to search for it. Eventually they heard its weakened croaks and, peering over the lip of the rut, saw the frog huddled sadly at the bottom. All of their creativity and efforts to help proved futile, and eventually, being frogs, they abandoned the frog to its fate.

The next day, the friends and family awakened to a hearty croaking, only to find their trapped companion jumping happily across the lily pads. "We thought that you were trapped in a rut and couldn't get out," they said with surprise. "I was, and I couldn't," replied the frog. "Until a wagon came along and I had to."

Like the frog, we tend to learn best when we are ill-prepared for the challenge at hand, when figuring it out is the only alternative, and the consequences of not doing so affect us significantly.

Watch video: Career tips -- go from geek to pro!

Illlustrations: Vaibhav Shirke

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e-mail: Astha Parmar

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