Strike while the iron is hot

Taking effective action

“Blacksmith” designed by me

A while ago, I read a creative translation of the biblical passage in Ecclesiastes 11:4, “If you wait for perfect conditions, you will never get anything done.” That translation intrigued me. A literal translation is, “Whoever observes the wind will not sow, whoever regards the clouds will not reap.”

I like the idea of trusting my intuition and knowing when to act. I explored that theme in my April 28 post “Don’t block the creative flow” with the saying of Voltaire, “the perfect is the enemy of the good.”

A similar piece of advice is “strike while the iron is hot.” This comes from blacksmithing. The blacksmith heats the piece of iron in a forge until it is pliable. They quickly take the iron out and hammer it into shape on the anvil. If the smith waits too long, the metal cools and cannot be shaped. Timing is everything. The idiom urges us to know the appropriate moment and take decisive action before conditions change.

The Irish poet William Butler Yeats gave the saying a twist, writing: “Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.”

And I am reminded of this saying: “Fortune favours the bold.”

The Roman poet Virgil wrote the Latin phrase that translates to “fortune favors the bold”. In his epic masterpiece, the Aeneid (written around 19 BCE), the character Turnus rallies his men into battle with the line, “Audentis Fortuna iuvat“.

This isn’t about being reckless. It is about finding confidence, trusting your intuition, and taking effective action. Good luck!