That one simple phrase has been one of my personal philosophies and drivers for achievement since I was young. When facing difficulty, I find it useful to remember that any worthwhile task -- love, a business opportunity, writing meaningful software -- is difficult and complex. That's how the real world is, and the things worth working for are hard to solve and demand perseverance.
I recently heard a colleague say, "If we're not having problems, that's a problem." I totally agree.
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Matt Karatz spoke to our leadership and ethics class a few weeks ago, and it was an interesting discussion that reinforced a lot of things other speakers mentioned. Karatz has worked in the Office of Economic and Business Development for the City and in the field of real estate development as well.
He graduated from Claremont college and went to New York to become a journalist. After a lot of hard work in calling many news agencies, ABC News World Report Investigative Reporting hired him. Most of his work ended up causing him to write stories about the bad in people, and he quickly got tired of it, even though he was successful at it, receiving an Emmy for one of his stories. He transitioned to real estate and worked for KBHome. After that, he went to work for Caruso, the owner of the Grove shopping mall. Austin Beutner, whom we also heard speak in our class, reached out to him and offered him the opportunity to help him in his City post. Karatz took the position for $1 salary and ended up getting a lot done. Beutner really inspired Karatz to believe he could actually change local politics. Now, Karatz is going back to real estate. The biggest lessons he told us he learned from his experience were the following:
This post was inspired by an old sci fi book I'm reading called Neuromancer. In it, people have the technology to reconstruct and upgrade parts of their body, rendering them virtually immortal.
That got me thinking: What if we could live forever? How would we live? Would we live opposite to the philosophy of treating each day as if it were our last? Or would we aim to keep that sort of intense focus on appreciating the present? Would we focus on the long-term instead? This line of thought brought me to consider the concept of w4w -- work for work's sake -- from The 4-Hour Workweek. This concept refers to simply spending time doing things "productively" and "efficiently" without regard to their purpose, need, or effectiveness. It also involves postponing life or procrastinating on decisions that are difficult to make (like how one would spend one's free time if one had it) since it's a lot easier to just spin one's wheels doing work that one knows how to do. I feel like the two philosophies of long-term perspective and carpe diem are not necessarily at odds; it seems like the right approach may be doing both simultaneously. |
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