Poll: Effort vs Result - Which one is more important?

[4RM3D]

Which is more important: effort or result?

NOTE 1: It's usually the middle road, yes. But if it comes down to those two choices, which one is more important?
NOTE 2: I haven't mentioned any context / frame of reference on purpose.

Nonetheless let me give you a few examples:
1) Someone is trying to bake a birthday cake for you (instead of buying one), but it fails.
2) Indie devs try to make an awesome game but don't have enough founds to implement certain features (or make a proper game at all).
3) At work you try your best, but a colleague does things better with less effort.

All examples have (a lot of) effort, but not (much) result.

For me I make a difference between personal effort and commercial effort. In example 1 I rather have the effort (personal), but in example 2 I rather have the result (commercial).

But if I really have to choose between the two I would rather still go for the result.

 

[Hoplon]

Effort.

If something is great with out you trying it probably means it had nothing to do with you.

 

[maotad]

Result.
You build a house, but its crap and collapses. Maybe you gave it your best, but people still can't live in it.

 

[Aeshi]

It's the results that people will remember.

 

[Fappy]

In a broad sense I think results are more important, but in certain situations the amount of effort put in is all that really matters.

 

[Waffle_Man]

I'd actually say practice or method, which I generally tend to distinguish from effort and results, is the most important aspect of an action. You can lump this into effort if semantics don't interest you all that much, but I'd say that it's overly simplistic to think of an action as being comprised of just effort and result.

If results are point x, I would consider efforts to be one's attempt to reach x. Practice, on the other hand, is doing Y, simply because Y is important in an of itself. To put it another way, if one succeeds, it doesn't necessarily mean that the actor involved was anything other than lucky. If one expends a large amount of energy on something, it doesn't mean that they were necessarily expending it in a smart way. Practice is important because it allows for a constant metric to measure how successful an action was without having to worry about factors beyond the control of the individual.

 

[JoJo]

NOTE 2: I haven't mentioned any context / frame of reference on purpose.

See, this is the problem with this sort of thread, it's the same as that "What would you do if your best friend murdered someone" thread. It's impossible for us to give a proper answer without knowing the context, it can be either. For example:

Result is more important than effort if the results will actually affect people's lives, for example the amount of effort put into building a rocket would be irrelevant if it blew up on the launchpad.

Effort is more important that results however if the actual result will have little effect on anything else, such as a child's art project.

 

[SonicWaffle]

1) Someone is trying to bake a birthday for you (instead of buying one), but it fails.

How does one bake a birthday? More importantly, where does one buy a birthday?

OT: Contextual. In some situations you'll still be respected if you did your absolute goddamned best (except by tools, but who cares what they think?) and failed, like how we give silver medals to the second place in the Olympics. At other times there are no prizes for being second-best no matter how hard you try. Like JoJo says, it's far too open-ended for a judgement to be made without knowing the circumstances.

 

[Comocat]

I spent probably 20 hours writing (actually probably more) a grant to the NSF to fund my graduate school, all that time and research netted me exactly 0 dollars from the federal government. I think while you're in school effort means a lot, because the results are fairly trivial. Once you join society, people only care about money in and money out, it doesn't matter how you get there.

Edit: The other example I can think of is research. Try publishing negative results and editors will look at you like you're high. Sure it might be helpful telling people what does not work, but in the end if you want to be a respected scientist, you need to win grants and publish original research.

 

[4RM3D]

How does one bake a birthday? More importantly, where does one buy a birthday?

Haha... The cake is a lie!

 

[Genocidicles]

Result. For Illustration theory my mates are always worrying about the essay, slowly adding to it as the as the weeks go on until deadline, sinking hours into the thing.

I write mine the day before it's due in, usually whilst playing games in the background. I usually get a better mark.

 

[Frission]

There are two tragedies in life. Not getting what you want and always getting what you want.

Do you follow? Putting alot of effort and getting nothing sucks, but you won't value something you didn't work towards it.

 

[Frission]

How does one bake a birthday? More importantly, where does one buy a birthday?

Haha... The cake is a lie!

That joke is ancient. A part of me wants to stab you with great prejudice for having made that joke

 

[Canis Fidelis]

It's a really difficult question, I voted Effort but I'm not entirely happy with that, as others have said context is really important, in a situation where effort is viable, it's a friend/co-workers or just a bad situation but someone has worked hard you'd have to be pretty heartless to tell someone their effort wasn't good enough if they've given it everything.
In that regard though commercial situations or situations where the other person is anonymous/ their effort is unseen people seem much more ready to act like jerks if the results aren't up to standard, but results can have a massive impact on a lot of things.

So that's my non answer, don't think it helped anything.

 

[repeating integers]

Result.

I was just having a music version of this conversation with a friend. We both came to the conclusion that skill/talent is essentially meaningless - what matters is the final product.