We tend to forget asking ourselves this important question. People go through life realizing how fast time is ticking away usually when they are already too old and grey to make a change. This is perfectly normal as life is full of surprises — both good and bad. It’s easy to get caught up in the loop of reacting to “crisis” or simply going with the flow. Consequently, planning the year ahead isn’t an easy task, not to mention planning the next decade or so. The logical question is “How to know what to do with my own life, since I can’t be sure that any of my plans will fall in place?!”

Short answer is “You can’t!”, but then again you don’t even have to. What you have to do is to be honest with yourself — are you happy with your life? If most of the time the answer is yes, then you’re doing it right. On the other hand, if the answer is negative, then you have to change something as Steve Jobs famously said.

The two most important areas in one’s life are work and family. I am far from being eligible to tell you what to do if you have problems at home — I’m still too young and hence lack the experience to give advices on that matter. Having just over a decade work experience as software developer I might be too young to enlighten you how to choose your career and do your work as well. Yet, I’d like to share my thoughts on a recent debate sparked by David Marcus — the former PayPal president. His memo to PayPal’s employees at the San Jose office was both praised and met with criticism. Whether he was right or not is not for me to judge. Yet, I can’t agree more with his closing words:

“In closing, if you are one of the folks who refused to install the PayPal app or if you can’t remember your PayPal password, do yourself a favor, go find something that will connect with your heart and mind elsewhere. A life devoid of purpose, and passion in what you do every day is a waste of the precious time you have on this earth to make it better.

Onward with passion, purpose, and gusto!”

Some folks at the office digged it. They were sick of the lack of commitment and passion of their colleagues which naturally let their own morale degrade over time. Others made the case that he, the big bad boss, shouldn’t force his employees to use their own product and that he’s being a tyrant and an awful leader. Hmmm, ooook, but WHY on earth would someone refuse to use their own app/service — the one they are spending their lives for? Either they don’t like/care about it and their industry as a whole or they are utterly unhappy with the quality of their own product. In both cases these people are, as David put it, wasting their precious time and also the time of their fellows, that actually are passionate and care.

That being said, I am not claiming those individuals are bad in any way. What I am saying is that if you spend your life doing something that you hate or at best don’t care about, then you, my friend, are throwing your years away. We all need to be paid and make a living, but hardly any good developer would ever have issues meeting ends, right? So why is it so hard to simply find a better and more fulfilling job? Wouldn’t that make us happier so that when we grow old, we could look back with smile and pride? Or we are too afraid to leave our unsatisfying, but well-paying position? If that’s the case, then we deserve our fate.

I believe people who let fear rule their lives can’t expect to be happy. The sad thing is that if we are not happy with our work — the place where we spend most of our time, then we are most likely not going to be happy with our lives overly. As I’ve noted already, I`m too young to be an expert in family matters, but how can one bring joy to his relatives if he’s mostly unhappy?

Why we do what we do? A question we should ask ourselves more often.

However, as a co-founder of Cool Apps I feel tempted to share why we do what we do in our company. Of course, this can be an article of its own. Still, to put it shortly — we do it out of passion, as cheesy as it may sound. The passion for coding and creating great apps that we can be proud of and that people actually find helpful (no farting apps from us). We also do it for the fun! The fun of working head to head with great developers — one that are not only geeks, but also fascinating human beings!

So, I hope I’ve made my point — if the answer to this challenging question is fear or laziness then you are screwed and you deserved it! To the rest of us who refuse to act as victims, but rather accept that we are masters of our own fate and responsible for the outcomes:

“Onward with passion, purpose, and gusto!”