Thursday, October 6, 2011

On Excellence and Death

Steve Jobs once said:
We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent.
Because this is our life.
Life is brief, and then you die, you know?
And we’ve all chosen to do this with our lives.
So it better be damn good. It better be worth it.
Be a yardstick of quality.
Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.
This comment was apparently made in 2008, when the man was almost certainly fully cognizant of his impending demise.

It is not my purpose to bury or to praise the man. I would just like to take this opportunity to discuss the topic of excellence.

Some folks think that excellence means starting a billion-dollar company or perhaps winning the Nobel Prize or something like that. I don't think so.

I actually agree with Steve. The brutal truth is that life is often nasty, brutish and short. Unlike a computer game, one doesn't have the luxury of reloading life from a saved game. We only get one shot at it.

In this light, it is my opinion that excellence is not so much a destination, but an attitude. We all have to decide what we want to do with our lives and give it our best.

When Steve says that "everyone should be excellent", he cannot mean that everyone can be excellent at anything.

Different people are different and it is in that diversity that mankind has successfully reached our current stage of modern civilization.

The trouble is that many are stuck trying to conform to what are society's norms and standards. Parents want their kids to become lawyers and doctors because they think that guarantees a good life. Many students want to join banks after graduation because they want to make a lot of money. Another girl I know is desperate to get married because her friends are getting engaged and are queueing for a flat.

My hope for my students is that they will find the courage in themselves to do something that they find meaningful and work towards becoming excellent at something. Anything.

Dr. Martin Luther King once said, “If life makes you a street sweeper, be the best street sweeper you can be” and there is a story about a janitor that makes this point in a very poignant way.

Finally, I really don't think a life needs to be long. No one gets to decide how long his/her life will be (unless he/she decides to end it prematurely) so it's not really worth fretting over. How many people live longer lives fretting over it?

We should just learn to be grateful for each day we get and do things according to our good conscience (and be mindful of our mortality).

I am grateful for what I have. I have a lovely wife and two beautiful daughters and get to decide what to do each day that will make a small difference. I count my blessings every day. :-)

6 comments:

  1. I think the tricky part is finding what you're really good at.

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  2. Well, nobody is really good at anything by default. To achieve extraordinary mastery, there is a need to put in 10,000 hours of what's called deliberate practice.

    The reason why there are so few people who are really good any anything is that very few people are sufficiently disciplined and motivated enough to put in the effort required to achieve mastery. :-)

    In summary, to respond to your comment, it's not so much figuring out what you're good at, but deciding that you want to be good at something and then suffering the pain required to actually get v good at it. :-)

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  3. thanks for the reminder prof. your comments resonate with me.

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  4. "Another girl I know is desperate to get married because her friends are getting engaged and are queueing for a flat." Hahaha.

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  5. I was quite indifferent about Steve Jobs until earlier this year when I started reading things he had said about excellence like the one you posted here. One which stuck in my mind was how he said that if you were a master cabinet maker you would not create a great piece of furniture then stick a bit of plywood on the back even if it would be against the wall and nobody would see it. You would know it was there and it would keep you awake at night. This is what is missing from so much in the world today, we should all care more about what we do and what we create.

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  6. "My hope for my students is that they will find the courage in themselves to do something that they find meaningful and work towards becoming excellent at something. Anything."

    Amen ^^

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