Random Musings

 

  Upwind  " If I were back in high school and someone asked about my plans, I'd say that my first priority was to learn what the options were. You don't need to be in a rush to choose your life's work. What you need to do is discover what you like. You have to work on stuff you like if you want to be good at what you do"   "But there are other jobs you can't learn about, because no one is doing them yet. Most of the work I've done in the last ten years didn't exist when I was in high school. The world changes fast, and the rate at which it changes is itself speeding up. In such a world it's not a good idea to have fixed plans." "I think the solution is to work in the other direction. Instead of working back from a goal, work forward from promising situations. This is what most successful people actually do anyway. In the graduation-speech approach, you decide where you want to be in twenty years, and then ask: what sho...

http://www.eoslifework.co.uk/transprac.htm

Lovely Post as we start 2016 "The most simple and basic component of life: our struggles determine our successes. So choose your struggles wisely, my friend" .. and the full post Everybody wants what feels good. Everyone wants to live a carefree, happy and easy life, to fall in love and have amazing sex and relationships, to look perfect and make money and be popular and well-respected and admired and a total baller to the point that people part like the Red Sea when you walk into the room. Everyone would like that—it’s easy to like that. If I ask you, “What do you want out of life?” and you say something like, “I want to  be happy and have a great family and a job I like,” it’s so ubiquitous that it doesn’t even mean anything. A more interesting question, a question that perhaps you’ve never considered before, is what pain do you want in your life? What are you willing to struggle for? Because that seems to be a greater determinant of how our lives turn out....

Now Paul is someone worth emulating.... http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2011/08/25/despite-y-combinator-growth-paul-graham-still-coding/

Internalize this advice..... to stay relevant in any sphere... Side Projects IMPORTANCE OF SIDE PROJECTS Side projects are important for a few reasons. Programming is a creative process. Side projects allow programming without deadlines or restraints. Side projects allow programming in an exploratory way. EXPLORE NEW TECHNOLOGIES Every day there are more and more bleeding edge technologies coming out. A side project is a great place to try them out. There’s no reason to worry about bugs or performance issues because it’s just a side project. You’re not depending on the project to pay your bills. It’s ok if the website crashes. CREATING FROM SCRATCH Most jobs I’ve had so far were mostly maintenance work. Adding new features, fixing bugs, troubleshooting performance problems, refactoring existing code. Though I’ve built more than a few applications from scratch, it only takes me a couple months to lay the foundation, and then I’m in maintenance mode again. Side projects require creating ...

Great post and could not agree more... on the "Great Reset" the period that we are in now and what it means to you as an individual " Today, a person’s professional identity is more important than ever. Individual skills, expertise, reputation and authority have become the personal currencies of our economy. And they are the currencies that will lead us into the future." "We finally realize the ultimate extension of the founding concepts: the democratization of opportunity. No longer do background, resources, education, or other former determinants of success control enterprise. Gone is the need to come from the right family, grow up on the right side of the tracks, or have access to the right resources. The opportunities provided by the transformation to an online business landscape, as well as the elimination of many barriers to entry and transaction costs, have left individual strengths, passions and expertise as the only distinguishing factors remaining in...

Good advice from one of my favourite Harvard Business School professors Clayton Christensen to the class of 2010 On Thinking... " When people ask what I think they should do, I rarely answer their question directly. Instead, I run the question aloud through one of my models. I’ll describe how the process in the model worked its way through an industry quite different from their own. And then, more often than not, they’ll say, “OK, I get it.” And they’ll answer their own question more insightfully than I could have." On Happiness "How to be sure we find happiness in our careers—is from Frederick Herzberg, who asserts that the powerful motivator in our lives isn’t money; it’s the opportunity to learn, grow in responsibilities, contribute to others, and be recognized for achievements." On Management "Management is the most noble of professions if it’s practiced well. No other occupation offers as many ways to help others learn and grow, take responsibility and be...

From somebody who has seen and is accomplished himself...

Keep reminding myself that every human being in any context should be judged by this... "It does not matter where you are coming from, where you going is" - Condoleeza Rice another version the so called "American dream" "…to every man, regardless of his birth, his shining, golden opportunity ….the right to live, to work, to be himself, and to become whatever thing his manhood and his vision can combine to make him." ..... sure think in todays context where information flow is seamless , opportunities to execute such a dream sure exists in every part of the globe... Get inspired listening to these stories... http://etl.stanford.edu/