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May 09, 2005
Introspection : Being vs. becoming successful
For large parts of my life the principle "For unto whom much is given, much will be required" was a curse. I won't spend time on examples here; but I clearly was among those to whom much had been given, and I felt pressure to achieve some great legacy with those gifts to justify my existence. The problem was that the pressure to achieve quite often sapped the very energy I needed to make those accomplishments by driving me into depression about how little I thought I had done.
I was someone who had desire to do a great many things, and I did have the ability to actually achieve them individually. As a result I often became overwhelmed by what a small percentage of all of those possibilities I had actually managed to accomplish. This however was unfair. A more realistic appraisal is that there just isn't enough time in one life to do all of the things I wanted to do, no matter how focused I was (and if I had tried to do it all, I would not have enjoyed any of it). When I compare what I have done with what I actually had the time to do, I fair much better.
Fortunately, I am getting beyond this now. My release from this bondage has come in two forms.
First, I can now recognize that:
1) Being granted 8 patents (with 6 more pending) for inventions I had made…
2) Serving as software architect for a fortune 500 company …
3) Teaching some of the classes I have taught to pass on what I have learned…
...would count as a successful legacy in any rational definition of that term. Sure, I "could" have done more; but I've done fairly well so far and I'm not done yet.
Second, I have begun to be more deliberate in thinking about what specifically I want to do with the rest of my life. To that end I have been thinking a lot about what I want to focus on doing, and what I will simply discard as good things but "not in this lifetime". For instance I love games, and love designing games. I have a folder full of game ideas that I have accumulated over the years. However, even if that was all I did, I would not be able to develop all of those games in a complete lifetime. So I have selected 2 game ideas to "keep", and have set the goal to develop one of them. The rest I am giving up on. I'm doing the same thing with every one of my other interests - deciding what subset I realistically think I can accomplish without burning myself out, and setting myself free of the burden of the rest.
Some people are burdened by the physical clutter they have accumulated in their lives - all of "stuff" they own imposes a psychological burden on them. The physical stuff in my life does not affect me that way. Instead I find myself burdened by the mental clutter of projects I have accumulated to do, and am finding cleaning my mental house to be quite a pleasant release.
Posted by Steven at May 9, 2005 07:27 PM
Comments
Yup - it's amazing how some of the physical stuff/clutter in your life gets in the way of doing what you want to do.
Perhaps we should rent a skip?
(-:
Posted by: Anne at May 9, 2005 07:33 PM
