{"id":873,"date":"2014-02-03T23:53:45","date_gmt":"2014-02-04T07:53:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/?p=873"},"modified":"2014-02-03T23:53:45","modified_gmt":"2014-02-04T07:53:45","slug":"what-do-i-want-to-be-excellent-at","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2014\/02\/03\/what-do-i-want-to-be-excellent-at\/","title":{"rendered":"What do I want to be excellent at"},"content":{"rendered":"

We’ve got an amazing thread going on on amplifize<\/a> focusing on a New Yorker article<\/a> about the ill effects of working too much.<\/p>\n

I’ve ended up on the other end of the debate (as seems to happen a lot lately) advocating for overwork when applied towards achieving a degree of excellence. In my mind the goal is to get to the now idolized 10,000 hours before the gal (or guy) next to you beats you there. My brother, in his newly elevated eloquence, came back and challenged me by saying that excellence should be achieved in pursuit of a life well lived. He started and ended by asking me what I wanted to be excellent at. Here is my response.<\/p>\n

The number one thing I want to be excellent at is being a father. When I think about the amount of time I put into this, I’ve definitely passed into the zone of overwork. That probably sounds ridiculous since fatherhood is considered by many to be a 24-hour job, but that is in fact a lie. It takes all of 30 seconds to become a father biologically. After that, the choice, and depth, of fatherhood is completely on the individual. The level to which anyone can invest should have checks and balances. I don’t think I’ve found my checks or balances. It’s definitely hurt me in relationships with friends. It’s also definitely made it harder for me to justify networking events, after works drinks, and the like. The costs are real, but the benefits are real as well. Overworking as a father is a choice that I continue to make. The only real concern that I have is that I haven’t found a good over-recover cycle to balance it. This is a challenge I need to address.<\/p>\n

After that (for me) is to leave behind a legacy of a product excellently built, and, at this point in my career, I can still selfishly hope for it to be products plural. To build excellent products requires diving not only into the problem space, but the mind of the end-user, the architecture of the right solution, and the journey of the product life cycle. People specialize immediately in their careers because specialization is often interchanged with expertise. I don’t think this is true. A corner of a component of a product is as unaware of the whole as my left ear. And yet when I put it together with my right ear, the whole of my head, and the rest of my parts, you get a full picture of the product that is me. I think building excellent products requires being able to dive deep into the left ear while understanding that it’s a person you’re building, and not a microphone. Experts tend to confuse the microphone for the ear when in fact one simply mimics another. There is an obsessive tendency to building excellent products that leads to overwork, and I think it can be detrimental to the overall experience and outcome. Finding the release parachute when it’s needed is a hard fought battle with oneself, and one that I know I often lose. Nonetheless, I don’t know how else to build excellent product but with both feet jumping straight in.<\/p>\n

Finally, I want to be an excellent husband. This means being more patient, a better listener, quicker with my kindness, and slower with my smart ass nature. This one is the hardest for me because I actually don’t know what it looks like. There’s no one else to compare to for an excellent husband for Micky. The lack of a yard stick means that no one else can ever beat me, but that I can also never know if I’ve done it or not. That vagueness, that abstractness, makes it hard for me to know if I’ve entered overwork or not. You could argue the same is true for the kids, and you’d be correct, but I’ve felt much less loss at striving to be an excellent husband than I have at being an excellent father. Maybe loss is the measuring stick, and in not losing enough (or trading off enough), I haven’t gone far enough. That’s actually a great question to ask. In general though, I find the pursuit of being excellent for her makes me better not only at this task but the other two above as well. It’s an unintended benefit which I’ll gladly take.<\/p>\n

I think if I pull off all three of those things, then I will have lived an excellent life. It will have been put to the test, and found sufficient. I think ultimately, it will be something that someone at sometime points to and says – I’d like for that to be me.<\/p>\n

It’s a great conversation we’re having. I’m very lucky to be so challenged by such a great group.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We’ve got an amazing thread going on on amplifize focusing on a New Yorker article about the ill effects of working too much. I’ve ended up on the other end of the debate (as seems to happen a lot lately) advocating for overwork when applied towards achieving a degree of excellence. In my mind the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[4,1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pQyAq-e5","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1036,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2014\/03\/23\/this-week-in-review-11\/","url_meta":{"origin":873,"position":0},"title":"This week in review","date":"March 23, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"A long, crazy, week. The end of lots of things, and the beginning of some really great ones. This week in review... Working on a cross Comms project means a lot of morning meetings. Holy smokes that takes coordination. Phone charged. Awake. Kids taken care of. Into the meeting. Mentally\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Life Updates"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":257,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2010\/02\/12\/reflecting-on-a-good-week\/","url_meta":{"origin":873,"position":1},"title":"Reflecting on a good week","date":"February 12, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"I had a really good week this week. That's a very rare statement for me over the last two years. The general problem has been me. Sometimes the problem has just been the uncontrollable set of circumstances which life delivers on us. With all of that though, I had a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "just thinking out loud"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":28,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2006\/11\/02\/ssa-iii-day-one\/","url_meta":{"origin":873,"position":2},"title":"SSA III - Day One","date":"November 2, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"The flight today was really difficult. I stayed up all night doing laundry because I'm an idiot, and then made it to a 8:15am flight. A gentleman woke me up before final boarding call, and that's the only reason I made my flight to Atlanta. I hit the window and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "SSA III"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":875,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2014\/02\/04\/the-olympics-are-almost-here\/","url_meta":{"origin":873,"position":3},"title":"The Olympics are almost here!","date":"February 4, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"I genuinely love the Olympics. Following on yesterday's talk about what to be excellent at, I think the Olympics gives us all a chance to really rally around this elite set of folks who are genuinely excellent at these sports. For some reason, and I don't really know why, I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "just thinking out loud"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":132,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2009\/04\/04\/growing-up\/","url_meta":{"origin":873,"position":4},"title":"Growing Up...","date":"April 4, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"I realized recently that the toughest part of moving out to San Francisco is how much I've had to grow up. It seems funny to think that I can finish college, or be 24 years old, and feel as if I haven't prepared myself for the real world, but that's\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "just thinking out loud"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":157,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2009\/08\/27\/to-be-proud\/","url_meta":{"origin":873,"position":5},"title":"To Be Proud","date":"August 27, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"In a general regard, I think that having pride in what one does is one of the more difficult achievements on my list. I think this mainly comes from the fact that many people work simply to support a lifestyle or to cater to a social norm of contributing or\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "just thinking out loud"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}