Don't love what you work on
Steve Job’s Stanford Commencement Speech is definitely one of the speeches which inspired me most. (Another one would be Steven Colbert’s speech at 2006 White House Correspondents Dinner)
“And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.”
I can’t agree more on this quote from Job’s speech. This is certainly the first step to be successful in the area you love. If you don’t love what you do, how could you put enough time on it? But many people shared a misconception (at least I’m one of them) on this, that is, what you do does not necessarily mean the thing you do for living.
Most of the time when I look back at my life, I cannot see that I have achieved any single thing that I love. I was invited to study Master degree; I outperform a dozen of students and got into CMU as an exchange student; I was generally regards as a competent computer science guy. But I can’t see any single thing (website, awards, etc) that is remarkable. What’s wrong with my life? I am too good on what I do for living.
When you’re good at something and that something is useful, you become popular. You will be invited to do a lot of amazing stuff. If you’re a responsible person and do feel hard to drop out of tasks you’re working on, you’re in a worse situation. Most of your time will be drained by all these tasks. I’ve try so hard on “injecting” my idea into my work. But some people just can’t understand what you’re trying to do and keep on twisting your idea into their ideas. Too bad.
“To love what you do” does not necessaily mean “To love what you work on”. Not many people could actually do what they really love for living. The right way is to find some job which paid enough to live your life, and do “what you love” outside the nine-to-six (yah, we work nine-to-six in Hong Kong!). Or, love to do something else, but not your work.
