The importance of striving for awesome.

When I was about to graduate from college, I was often asked what I would be doing with the rest of my life. This is a usual question that is asked of graduates and I have very rarely heard it answered to satisfaction. Upon being asked this for the 42nd time, I decided on my response..”Something Awesome”

I know this is a simple answer and decidedly nondescript. I think it is a powerful answer in the philosophy that it entails. A lot of people are described by their job, and that is what they live for. I really don’t want that to be me. I want my job to describe who I am, an extension of the things that I care about.

“Something awesome” is an incredibly powerful, positive, and motivating prospect. Everyone wants to be doing something awesome. Why allow yourself not to? I think that is just unacceptable…

I want people to call me out when I’m sucking. When you set the bar awesome high then you really can evaluate where you are going. I think striving for the moon and getting to the clouds is a much better result than striving for the roof and waiting for an elevator.

There was an interesting tidbit that I read about the value of aiming high. Aiming high isn’t the norm. Most people are busy trampling over each other to compete for mediocrity and the truly awesome stuff never gets done. Stop worrying about how you’re going to do something, simply strive to be awesome and settle for nothing less.



Hey there! I'm Eric and I work on communities in the world of software documentation. Feel free to email me if you have comments on this post!