After IT, my other passion is Finance. My love affair with financial statements, number crunching, and the stock market started about 3 years ago. The first thing I realized back then was how little I knew about this area and so began an intense learning process that still continues. Of course having a Finance major as my girlfriend helps.
I make a point of consuming financial news and tidbits at least once a day. Yahoo has a great selection of columnists who post articles on a weekly basis. One of my favorites is Ben Stein and his current article titled Success Is All In A Days Work really got me thinking. It’s the first time I actually heard someone openly say that in order to achieve great success, we must work ALL the time i.e., make work our life. Yep, sounds scary, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that all the people I know of personally who I would label as really successful do make work their life. This does not mean that they *WORK* all the time, instead, tasks that an outsider may see as work , they see as life. They are so passionate about what they do, that they enjoy incorporating their passion in everyday non-work tasks. They bring work to lunch (pair programming, peer discussions), to the gym and the car (books, pod-casts), they hang out with like-minded people who love to discuss what they do, and they don’t waste a single moment but are always looking for opportunities to multi-task. Such is the life of a person who will achieve mad success in their field of passion.
Now how can you compete against such people who are so gung-ho, driven, and ambitious…well you CAN’T.