Perseverance

What Perseverance means in play

A rhythm-game passage keeps defeating you at the same awkward beat. Playing the whole song again gives you a very polished introduction to that defeat. The next day, you try the short passage more slowly and listen for the missing beat. It is still awkward. This time, though, your next attempt has a particular job.

Perseverance carries a chosen, worthwhile effort through setbacks. In play, that can mean returning to a skill you enjoy developing and changing the way you practice. Repetition becomes useful when you can notice something within it. A break, a simpler setting or a new explanation may belong to continued effort; difficulty alone does not prove that a method is working.

Finding the balance

In ordinary play

A difficult puzzle

Return with a fresh sketch or a smaller example instead of repeating the same unsupported guess.

A movement challenge

Practice one transition at a manageable setting, then decide whether the method helped.

Nearby virtues, different work

Patience

Patience permits learning to take time. Perseverance supplies the renewed effort; neither requires staying in an abusive or exhausting session.

Recognizing a counterfeit

Compulsive repetition counterfeits Perseverance when the only remaining aim is to justify time already spent. Perseverance remains answerable to the worthwhile purpose you chose.

Cultivating Perseverance

• Give each return one observation to make.
• Reconsider the method and the purpose when repeated effort stops teaching you anything.

Try it today

Choose one game skill you want to learn. Set a short practice period and one thing to observe. Afterwards decide whether another attempt, a different approach or a break serves the purpose.

Questions worth returning to

• What did the last attempt reveal?
• Is this still an effort I freely want to continue?

Choose your practice

These pages offer ideas for reflection and character practice, not professional advice. Choose practices suited to your circumstances and abilities. You may adapt, pause, or skip an exercise; putting yourself or someone else at risk is not proof of virtue.

Quotations and further reading

Seven readings, one for each day. All remain available here. Historical arguments and fictional dialogue are identified in their source notes.

1. the habit of hoping for a favorable change, and that of persevering in the search of resources.

   Benjamin Franklin · The Morals of Chess
   Paragraph on responding to an adverse position
   Benjamin Franklin · 1841 version, Wikisource transcription; original essay 1786; the preserved 1841-version transcription is the display source

   Franklin emphasizes searching for resources in a changed position. The player looks for a purposeful next attempt.

2. With very little children, passing is better than tossing; but with older children, or even with little ones, when more experienced, it is well to use the game as a practice for tossing and catching.

   Jessie H. Bancroft · Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium
   Fox and Squirrel
   Jessie H. Bancroft · Project Gutenberg #25660; introduction dated March 1909; Linked text does not identify a dated title-page imprint.

   Bancroft gives a passing game a more demanding form as players gain experience. A useful practice can grow with the people playing it.

3. So far, we have never got it up to the table, but some day we will …

   H. G. Wells · Floor Games
   Section IV, Funiculars, Marble Towers, Castles and War Games
   H. G. Wells · Project Gutenberg 3690 transcription of the 1911 work; specific underlying print imprint not identified in Linked text

   The players’ miniature mountain railway has not yet reached the table. Wells records the unfinished ambition with pleasure: another attempt still offers something worth discovering.

4. And at last our rules have reached stability, and we regard them now with the virtuous pride of men who have persisted in a great undertaking and arrived at precision after much tribulation.

   H. G. Wells · Little Wars
   II, The Beginnings of Modern Little Warfare
   H. G. Wells · Project Gutenberg 3691 transcription of the 1913 work; specific underlying print imprint not identified in Linked text

   Wells gives the revision of a toy-soldier game mock-heroic grandeur. Behind the joke is the work of trying rules, finding problems and trying again.

5. It is advisable to practise the tricks before a looking-glass, and for two reasons: firstly, to see that you are doing the trick neatly; and secondly, it is a training in accustoming the eyes not to look at the hands during the performance of a sleight.

   Anonymous (Cassell’s compilation) · Cassell’s Book of In-Door Amusements, Card Games, and Fireside Fun
   Parlour Magic, general hints
   Anonymous contributor to Cassell’s Book of In-Door Amusements · Third edition, Cassell, Petter, Galpin & Co., London, Paris and New York; title page undated in preserved Project Gutenberg #49137 transcription.

   This unsigned passage belongs to Cassell’s household compilation; the individual writer is not identified. Practice uses feedback to improve a particular action. The rhythm-game replay can make a missed transition equally visible.

6. That was a proficiency that tempted me; and I practised to acquire it, as men learn to whittle, in a wager with myself.

   Robert Louis Stevenson · Memories and Portraits
   IV. A College Magazine, I
   Robert Louis Stevenson · Fine-paper edition, Chatto & Windus, London, 1912; Project Gutenberg #381.

   His practice has a chosen object: learning to write. A difficult rhythm passage offers a similarly definite skill to work on.

7. I therefore would advise the student not to attempt to read the matter only, but to study it and sink some work into it.

   Emanuel Lasker · Common Sense in Chess
   Preface, p. 8
   Emanuel Lasker · J. S. Ogilvie Publishing Company, New York; undated title page, cataloged circa 1910, Internet Archive commonsenseinche00laskrich. Selected wording checked against preserved page images.

   Lasker asks readers to work through his selected positions. Improvement calls for trying the reasoning at the board as well as reading the explanation.

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