养兵千日

On Troop Readiness

A long time ago I had a rare moment in time when my work queue was all cleared of tasks. I mused to a fellow co-worker- "This is a strange one- the company pays me just to sit here." Then my wise friend taught me an old Chinese idiom- 养兵千日，用兵一时. It means the leader feeds his troops for a thousand days just to use once. That piece of wisdom hit me like a ton of bricks and stayed lodged in my brain for more than two decades.

2024-05