Career

Weekly Challenge: Review Of Patience

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Do you like waiting?

Trick question of course.  No one likes it; people at best tolerate waiting.  Yet we have to wait all the time, and it usually drives us a bit crazy.

Of course waiting patiently is often part of success.  Farmers of ages past had to wait on rain, flows of rivers, and the seasons.  Investors have to be patient to find the right time to buy or sell.

This week's exercise is a two-parter.

First, I want you to sit down for five minutes and write down all the things you've given up on in your career because you decided not to be patient.  What are the repercussions of these actions in your life and career?

Secondly, pick one thing you were looking forward to doing this week and delay it by at least one day.  Do it just to built a little patience.  Maybe in the weeks and months to come you can play with your impatience and purposefully develop your ability to be patient.

– Steven Savage

The Ethics of Doing What You Like

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Now and then when I talk to people about their careers, there seems to be a strange undercurrent of guilt when they discuss having their ideal career.  They feel that what they truly want to do is useless, that it doesn't benefit people, or that they're being selfish.  I usually encounter this among artists or people interested in video games, but I see it everywhere.

In short, I meet people who think "Doing what I really enjoy doesn't make the world a better place, so I shouldn't do it." 

What they're really saying is "I should do something I hate and would be lousy at in order to attempt to make the world a better place."  It's a strange kind of moral argument.

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No, New Technology Won’t Destroy Culture, Part Whatever

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Ever encountered the idea that the internet and online technologies will somehow destroy the barrier between professionals and amateurs, leading us to a horrible world without the glorious quality media we're used to?  That's a joke of course, between fears of Harlequin self-publishing to the "Cult of the Amateur" balderdash, we're all familiar with it.

I've recently found yet another reason this fear is a total load of hamster leavings beyond the many I've stated before.

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