My friend Johnny pointed me to a post by Jason Jaggard the other day that I wanted to share with you. Jason works with a “global NGO” called Mosaic, and wrote a post called “No this without this“.
Pretty cryptic title, but it makes sense once you read it. Head on over there and have a read just now… don’t forget to come back!
I’m assuming you’ve read Jason’s post – please do, or the rest of this won’t make as much sense. I’m a result-oriented person. I like to know what the outcome of my work is going to be, and focus on the end goal. The problem is, I often take my eye off the steps I have to take to get there! Does that sound familiar?
Aspiring young drivers might look at guys like Jensen Button and think, “I want to be the Formula 1 World Champion”… but Jensen didn’t get to that position overnight or without plenty of effort.
Technologists may look at the success of Google and wish to be like Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, Google’s founders. While there might be some element to them being in the right place at the right time, the amount of work needed to get an Internet startup off the ground and grow it into a multinational company is astounding.
Bloggers may look at guys like Darren Rowse and think, “I want to be a successful blogger like him”, but fail to take into account the years of hard work that go into that. I remember once reading Darren saying it can take years to make a blog successful… doesn’t sound like a quick fix, does it?
Here’s the thing. We need to be focused on the results we want to achieve so we know where we’re heading. If your aim is to be a race driver, you need to keep that central in your mind so you can work towards it. Similarly, if you want to head up a multinational company or earn a living online you need to be focused on making that happen. But don’t forget there’s a load of hard work between here and there. Sometimes the work is so hard you wonder if it’s worth the effort. On those days where nobody has visited your blog, or commented, or all your advertisers drop away, you might think of giving up. But on those days it becomes even more important to focus on your goal and take the next (perhaps small) step towards getting there.
And just because I can, here’s the video from Jason’s blog post… remember, a lot of hard work went into blowing up the Death Star ;)
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Post image by Flying Cloug
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