Ironically, this is really inspiring to me.
I was a part of this group called the multipotentialites which was for people who have a really broad range of interests. It was great for me, because I always thought that side of myself was incorrect, and that I should be focusing on one or two things instead.
However, I always ran into the problem that I was never really developing a single talent, project, or skill enough that it could be successful in its own right. It usually needed to be used with other skills or with other people.
My pattern was to go at something somewhat intensely for short periods of time (1 week, 1 month, or at max 3 months,) and then kind of decide whether I really liked it, or whether I was bored by it.
Most things were interesting for about 3 months.
However, I found a small group of topics that I continually return to. Personally, they are: music, programming, writing, and psychology. These things I return to no matter how happy, sad, successful, or fail(ful) I am.
In startup culture right now, there is a lot of motivational talk, speeches, and culture being thrown around. They often make you feel good, and feel like you are on track, but when those emotions wear off, you are essentially, just at work. If you don’t like your work enough to do it without emotional manipulation, you will probably end up going through a lot of wild mood swings, and your productivity will be heavily dependent on your emotional state.
I’m studying mindful meditation in my free time, and it takes an opposing view of emotion, which is (in hippie metaphor terms,) that emotions are a kind of river that you are in the middle of. They surround you and affect you constantly. You can either let it carry you away, or you can become aware that your emotions are there, pulling at you. Once you are aware of how strong and controlling some emotions can be, you can let them sit there, while you do whatever it is you were doing before they hit you. As someone with relatively strong emotions, this has been a godsend.
When Elon says “If you need inspiring words, don’t do it,” I think he is right. Inspiring words are enough to get you through the day, maybe even through the week, the month, or the year. But, they are not enough to justify a lifetime of sacrifice. The only thing that justifies a lifetime of sacrifice is that you actually love what you are doing. You can’t stop coming back, no matter what your emotional state is. You think it’s important. You want to do it for your own reasons.
For Elon, it seems to be very easy to work hard, for long periods of time. For me, it is very difficult. What I ask myself is “What do I enjoy doing or think is important enough, that I would be willing to change my work ethic for? What is interesting enough to me that I would change a part of who I am in order to achieve what I wanted?”
