Effort is nothing without good results

College taught me this.

I remember a time during college when I entered a Crystallography course and spent a lot of sleepless nights over assignments just to be turned down at a mere glance. Maybe you would say that the professor is snubbed and not easily pleased and with little regards to how much effort I have put in my assignments. Maybe you are right. But it just emphasized the reality to me, that no matter how much effort you have put into something, if it is not right, it is not. Until you learn how to do things properly, that is when your effort will amount to something.

Mind you, I love that professor.  So much, I used him as a subject to learn calligraphy brush tool in inkscape. [He he]

Studying calligraphy brush tool in inkscape

Same thing is true with my job. Colleagues often tease me on how overworking I can be, but I do not just want to work. I want to achieve my goal. I would not want to see wasting my 8 hours just delivering ‘work’ and not results. This is not even being hard on myself, actually this is me – seeing value on what I do and what I can do.

I work 24-7, including the nights I spent refactoring my codes in my dreams, and during coffee time with my husband, on suddenly realizing what the logic should be. I am not just a coder. I take pride that I do not just write codes but build them, from pieces of logic into stringing these pieces into a framework, where each object maybe re-used for the same purpose.

I do not think that it is too much to ask the same thing to other people. Anyway, we are not paid to just stay and deliver effort. We are paid to produce results.

This is why crafting is my stress reliever, and I stopped producing projects to be paid. With this, I fully enjoy the benefits of crafting without additional burden of producing the result expected by the client, or beating the deadline.

And I enjoy each time I produced good results with me as its very own beneficiary.

Fitting the dress

I love crafting. I really do.