Connect the past to reach the future

Recently, I listened to Steve Jobs’ commencement speech at Stanford University graduation in 2005 again. I have listened to that speech many times, yet I still find it inspiring. (Some of my friends think that I’m such a Steve Jobs worshiper, oh well, I respect him with all his unique past ~ you’ll find different him by reading some books about him or watching “Pirates of the Silicon Valley”).

Anyway, in this post in relation to my recent experience, I’d like to share about 2 things he talked back then.

Do you ever heard about “connecting the dots” of your life? Or maybe do you ever heard Steve Jobs’ commencement speech at Stanford University few years back? You can google it if you haven’t see or listen to his speech.

1. About finding what you like

This question is easy to answer yet to some of us is difficult. Me? I hardly can answer this back then. If you read my previous post you’ll get it 🙂

Since I know that I am the type of person who easily bored when doing something over and over again or doing something repetitively, I learn to accept it and learn how to trick myself :p

So, basically when I’m distracted with new things, I will keep my time short, we need a refreshing but doesn’t mean that it has to take all of our time, doesn’t it?

Back to finding what we like, among all the different stuffs I like, I found some patterns. There are some activities that keep appearing, and that’s how I found my passion.

2. About “the dots”

I used to like to “play around” with CMS system, starting from Joomla which I know it from a friend. Since then I like to explore about ready made system and learn how to customize them. Later on, I know wordpress and since I like writing a “diary”, I’m thinking let’s just blog it too. Basically I like to tell stories about what have I learn so far, from friends or from life.

That’s my first dot.

There was also a period of time when I was interested in image editing, using Photoshop, and vector drawing using Corel Draw, these helped me to find more exposure in poster design for a while. The skills help me a lot for creating images and stuffs for web development too.

And, that’s my second dot.

Moving forward to recent years, in my workplace currently there is a need to develop system that is stable and easy to use; and since we have time constraint, I proposed to use those CMS framework I know, joomla and wordpress. And now my company likes it.

That’s the connection of the dots from my past to the present state. Thinking inside my head about what Steve Jobs said, it’s true. Though that the “dots” I mentioned maybe not as big as his. 🙂

To sum up, sometimes we just need the courage to move forward, and by that way we are able to connect our dots. To believe more in ourselves. That’s why old saying said we should learn from our past. How about you?