Woven Pixels

Rubber meet Road

I value people who commit to the task at hand.

I'm talking about the plumber, electrician or carpenter who is so focused on their work that they don't hear a car crash outside. The car crash matters, but not to them, not in that moment.

Or the musician, surprised by the rising sun disturbing a session meant to end at 9:00 PM.

Or sleeping coders whose riddles dance and resolve in their dreams. Who jump out of bed and to the keyboard to see if it will really work.

Great talent or skill isn't required to possess this focus. Commitment to the job at hand is all that is required.

Find the thing that makes you feel committed, then work at it.

A lot.

Success and Failure

As a boy, I played a lot of team sports.

I remember the suppressed joy of playing well in a losing effort. I also remember the sadness of having a terrible game on a day we won. In the end, however, we defined success by our wins and losses. The personal good and bad days tended to even out. My personal goals were overshadowed by team goals.

In High School I ran track and was introduced to the tyranny of the clock. With solid finality, the clock reported whether my effort was an improvement or a set back. My job was to figure out what went right or wrong. 

Success in university level English classes was determined many factors. Coherency, elequency, grammatic precision, topic choice, and many other factors were mixed into a soup called a grade.

In other words, there was an element of subjectivity involved.

Once you take up an activity with goals, meeting those goals is success.

But what if the goals are set by someone else? What if the goals aren't clearly defined?

Thinking hard about what and who will determine your work a success or failure is a critical part of your decision making.

Know going in whether you are on a team, in a track meet, or looking for a grade in an English class.