…about how I ended up doing what I do now (part 1)

(Fair warning: This is a long story, and one that you might not care to read. Feel free to stop anytime.)

I’ve been programming since the beginning of middle school, so that makes it a total of about 12 years. As stupid as it sounds, I actually had wanted to be a magician, but every time I was practicing my card tricks, my brother would call me upstairs and ask me a computer question. He loved playing around with the computer (keep in mind this was back when the Internet wasn’t close to mainstream and there wasn’t much you could do on a computer). For some reason, he was obsessed with organizing his contacts and friends’ birthdays.

It started off with Excel. Then I learned about Visual Basic. That was an eye opener. The idea that I could build something from nothing was extremely fascinating to me. Since I didn’t have much of a social life and, living in an apartment with no friends nearby, didn’t have much to do outside, I spent the vast majority of my time reading and playing around with the computer.

I met a friend in middle school, Ara Mahdessian, who was also into programming. He overheard me talking about programming with our middle school Algebra teacher and he approached me. We had completely opposite personalities but we somehow were able to work very well with each other.

In high school, we started a company – Blue Media. We got our first client and made them an accounting system for their business. It was actually pretty damn good for a couple of teenagers. Then we got our second big client and made a web-based company management system for him. That took a lot of time and, in retrospect, was extremely overkill for what he wanted to do. We added accounting, inventory control, users and user groups, dynamic permissions, online orders, offline orders, and a whole slew of other features I can’t remember at the time. We got paid for it, but the client never even looked at it.

By the time we were done, high school was over and Ara was off to greener pastures at Stanford. We had an emotional yet happy farewell and went our separate ways.

At the time, I had decided I wouldn’t go to college just yet. I went to community college to take a few classes but had a horrible back incident that required surgery and some serious time off from school. By the time I got back, I was so behind that it wasn’t even worth trying to catch up. So I started working with our second Blue Media client and ended up staying there for over a year to help him improve his business.  On the side, I would still take on programming projects, which led me to my next job: condominium budgeting.

To be continued…

…about my aspirations

What goal am I trying to achieve in my life? I don’t think enough people ask themselves that.  I bet if you ask 10 people who they look up to, who they aspire to be, only a couple would have an answer. 

Something happened to all of us as we grew older: we stopped dreaming of being rock stars, surgeons, lawyers, politicians, and CEOs. The vast majority of people are cruising through life, taking it day by day. No goals mean no failures. And no successes. I don’t want to be like that. I want to reach the absolute highest goals I can imagine. I don’t want to regret not having taken any chances.

But it’s hard to start. It’s really hard. You think about it one night, then next morning you concentrate all of your powers to try and stop time, just so you can get a few extra minutes of sleep. It all goes downhill from there. 

Why is it so hard? I was thinking about that for months. I would have enlightenments and want to jump out of my seat and get started. But I didn’t. I had work to do, or it was time for bed, or I didn’t feel like starting right that moment. “Really soon” I would promise myself, but that was quickly forgotten.

I have a plan this time.

You see, the best and the brightest people are only slightly above everyone else. Even the best basketball team is statistically only a few percentage points better than the 2nd best team. 

So why not try to be only marginally better each day?

Instead of trying to change everything, change 1 thing. If your goal is to be the President one day, ask yourself, “What can I do today to get myself one step closer to that goal?” It doesn’t have to be anything big. There might be 6 million steps between what you do today to your goal, but all you need to take is one step. One extra sales call, one extra read-through of a report, one extra hour at work. 

Surprisingly, even this is hard to do. Here’s a simple example: flossing. It’s not difficult, and it doesn’t take that much time. But we don’t do it. “Really soon I’ll start.” Sound familiar? And you know that once you start, it’s no big deal. So how can you convince yourself to take that step?

Convince yourself.

Just like others can convince you into thinking you actually like their idea, you can convince yourself that it’s worth doing right now. The easier way I’ve found is to not feel like you are making a commitment. You don’t want to floss because you don’t want to have to go through this headache all the time. 

But you just need to convince yourself to do it this once.

You aren’t deciding to do it everyday, you aren’t setting yourself up for a lifetime of flossing. You are doing it just this once.  That’s usually enough to convince myself to do it. Then I go through the same negotiations every day. The more it happens, the easier it gets. And it happens like magic. Our brains will embed patters and make them something you want to do, all without you making any decisions. And that momentum will make it easier and easier to succeed. 

I’ve tried to start on my life goals many times, but now’s the time to start. Not “really soon,” but right now. That’s why I’ve deleted my old blog and am starting fresh. I’m going to focus on my little journey to a better life. And I’m going to take it one day at a time. So I guess this makes my blog a journal of my adventures and my thoughts (hence the blog title).