Tuesday 9 June 2009

How far can you go?

Its been a month since my last post. This is not because I have not much to say, quite the contrary. Rather, I have had a lot on my mind and have been busy with a range of things lately and I have been concerned that if I posted during the previous month, it would not be as articulate as I would have wanted.

Anyhow, my good flatmate postulated a pretty interesting questions - How far do you think you can go in business? This was too good a question for me not to comment on. It is not that I have never thought about it before, rather it is a question I have consciously shied away from answering. More on this later.

I suggested that how far you go in business is possibly down to a tug of war between 3 things...

1. Drive to Succeed
2. Will to work
3. Will to inconvenience

This was never meant to be some sort of a complete theory of work or anything of the sort - we did have this conversation while cooking some dinner.

This was always going to be a short post though. I normally ramble a lot, but this was meant to be very short and self reflecting. To be honest, I dont know what "success" looks like to me. I do have the will to work, and I am happy to inconvenience my social life at the expense of work on occasions, but for me, it is really difficult to answer this question.

One of the reasons I have shied away from answering this question, and possibly the reason i am doing so now, is that what if it is more simple that that. What if success boils down to a combination of luck, ability and opinions.

If success boiled down to these three things, I would find it difficult to accept. Difficult because the idea of luck is both mysteriously haunting and a semi rational justification for outcomes. Still, it is worth a thought or two.

Anyhow, I am thinking about this subject and I will come up with a more substantive post at some point.