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December 12th, 2007 | Posted in Technical Writing 6 Comments »
Reading this post by Scott Berkun made me want to be a workaholic. Here’s an excerpt:
Show me a genius and I’ll show you a workaholic. Van Gogh produced 2000 works of art between 1880 and 1890 (1100 paintings and 900 sketches). That’s 4 works of art a week for a decade, and he didn’t start making art until his mid twenties. DaVinci’s famous journals represent decades of note taking, doodling and observations, and it’s a good guess that work was the center of his life: no spouses or children are mentioned in any of our records of him (though he likely had lovers in his studio). Picasso made over 12,000 works of art (“Give me a museum and I’ll fill it” he said, and he was right) in his lifetime, including sculptures, paintings and other mediums. Shakespeare wrote more than 40 plays, not to mention dozens of sonnets, poems and of course, grocery lists. These are people who practiced their crafts daily and sacrificed many other ordinary pleasures in life to make their work possible. Every math or music prodigy practiced to produce the work they are famous for (See the ten year rule).
(This is an essay that Scott mentioned in his post here.)
Tags: genius, Scott Berkun, workaholic
That’s all well and good, but marriage and a family squashes all that great output…
http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/scitech/SciTechRepublish_898675.htm
Personally I’d rather not be the tech writer equivalent of Picasso or Van Gough, as I’m happy in my own sphere with my own little family.
I don’t feel like I have to be the very best or most renowned in order to provide value to my organization and put food on my table.
Call it lack of ambition or call it family oriented. I’ll take either as long as I can spend time with those I care most about.
I don’t think most people get to the advanced stages of life and look back wishing they had spent more time at work or had completed one more project. I’m certain I won’t.
I will hope I spent enough time with my kids and wife, though.
You have a good point. By workaholic, I didn’t mean just day job work, but any kind of endeavor one undertakes. Maybe it’s a tradeoff between creative fulfillment and satisfaction. The family gives you life satisfaction, the work gives you creative fulfillment (perhaps).
[...] Reading this post made me want to be a workaholic [...]
Great post. I wouldn’t consider myself a workaholic, but my family and friends do. I want to be a workaholic though and I’m trying very hard to get there. I have a 9-5 day job to pay the bills and hold off starvation when I remember to eat, but I spend every lunch break, every morning, evening, weekend and a couple of sleepless nights each week on writing, art and design – which is all I’ve ever wanted to do. My dream is to publish books, write musicals, plays, perfect my skills in painting and drawing and illustrate my books, design costumes, clothes, accessories and anything else I can think up. I have never had any interest in getting married or having children and would not care less if I had to sleep in a tent if it allowed me to keep ‘working’. I got rid of my bed a couple of years ago, as I was spending too much time lazing around in it. I want to be successful and earn respect from the people that I look up to and I will happily do whatever it takes to get there. There are various people that I want to meet one day and I want to meet them as an equal, not just as an admirer (if that makes sense)!
i want to know how to become workaholic because i remain dull i want to do something in life and i am lazy.