- I used to play games a lot. I played Sonic 3 to the point that I could collect all 7 Chaos Emeralds on the second level (Hydrocity Zone act 2). I played Contra so often that I could finish the game without dying even once (same thing with Lifeforce). I thought, "Hey, I'm invincible on these games!" Of course, many years later, the Internet proved me wrong (there are many people out there who've done crazier things). Even before I found out about these, I slowly realized with horror that I'm not a hardcore gamer at all. I'm just a casual one.
- I used to like programming a lot. I started with GWBasic, moved on to QBasic, Pascal... Even in university, at which I started to realize that programming can be difficult and not fun, I still see programming as the thing I'll do in my life. As I started working, though, I slowly realized--again with horror--that I'm not so hardcore a programmer that I can do it for life. There are so many things around programming that I don't think I can do.
One of my lecturers once said that it's much easier to find out what you didn't like to do than to find out what you liked to do. My personal experience persuade me to agree with him. Then, I asked, were I doomed to try things one by one, abandoning things I found not to my liking? (Computer Science students may relate that I didn't like this mainly because it felt like "exhaustive search".) I still think that that is the only way to find things out (and get things done); but the pattern I mentioned above provides me with an alternative heuristic.
Maybe we should ask not "what I want/like to do" but also "what I am willing to do in a hardcore manner". (You may quickly think "Define hardcore!". I'll leave it to each to define hardcore. After all, it's just a heuristic, not algorithm.)
I was really excited by this personal finding until I realized that the heuristic is equivalent to "finding your passion". I just replaced passion with hardcore :D
=D Interesting food for thought. Right now I know what my passions are (erm yeah, plural) but as they are not what I currently do 'for life', I also can't be sure if I will feel the same when the setting changes. I think some of us are just not the hardcore/'depth' type (who admittedly are more likely to go far in their fields) and more of the balanced/'breadth' type, with many interests?
ReplyDeleteOne of my passions I'm pretty sure I'd like to stay as a hobby, because making it a profession would require other factors that I don't like. One is actually my 'dream job' (or more like 'dream domain'), but, seeing as I already do some of it as part of my job and a lot of it for free (=D), I don't think it has very high value per se, thus I have no confidence to take it up without some financial freedom.
Ah la, c'est la vie? ;P
We can debate about this until the end of the universe :)
ReplyDeleteI guess to each his/her own. After all, it's a heuristic, not an algorithm.