My friend said a very interesting statement yesterday, “Although someone has interest on doing some kind of work, doesn’t necessarily means he is the right person to do it. Sometimes you need to go beyond normal, to give more than what you are required to do.”
The conversation was happened during our lunch time, and we were discussing about work (well sadly yeah, sometimes we discuss about work even during our lunch time).
Her statement made me think about some of my past experience, about going beyond things.
Sample story
It reflected back to the time when I was studying. I enrolled to a course which is not popular among females. I had more males friends than females and it was quite rare to see females student outshine the males. I didn’t see myself as bright student at that time. I needed more time to understand the lesson. I had to practice more often to think faster. I also found that I just can’t understand some subjects regardless how many times I reviewed it.
It happened for the first few semesters. I still did quite well on the exams, but deep down inside felt that I didn’t grasped the idea very well. I forgot what I had studied quite fast. Luckily, this was not happened during my whole university life. I passed semester by semester, until on my post second year of university, one particular subject drew my interest. It was internet application development, which is mostly scripting. I was in a group of four for the school project and I was the only girl in the team.
A surprising effect
I had initiative to buy a book related to the programming language for that class when I was at bookstore. I never buy a technical book before and that was my first experience. Maybe you think that I’m blowing things up, trying to make sensation over small little things. Hope not. I read the book and practiced more often than usual. It was like falling in love with someone and you don’t get enough of it. You want more and more of it.
Close to project submission date, we were working on it hard (sounds familiar? it’s just like what normal students do, doesn’t it? 😉 ) We were going one of our friends to work closely together on it until quite late at night. Some of them were knocked over on the couch while others were half awake. I was still immersed in what I did. In the end, I did my best to put every file together. I still felt that we still can do more but, I was alone at that time. My friend told me that my effort was too huge for just a school project.
I didn’t do more like what I wanted because time constraint, we had to submit it. Otherwise there will be penalty. And I was so proud of myself at that time. I feel that finally I found things that I like. That feeling motivates me to do more, to learn more, to give the best result.
End of story
I learned a valuable lesson from that. If we still don’t know what we like to do, we should do our best still. Don’t stop looking for it, as Steve Jobs said. Because the feeling once we found it, the feeling is great.
The thing that I was looking for named passion.
It is intangible, it will make you powerful, it can make us willing to stretch a little bit more.
Quoting another friend of mine, “love what you do and do what you love”. I found this quote is very profound. When we do something that we love, eventually we are willing to do more. To walk further than we could, to reach higher than expected and to put more effort on doing it. And it’s automatic from inside of us.
