Life is not about knowing the answers. Life is the journey to find the answers.
What makes life interesting is not knowing the answers.
I remember the time during my secondary years, when I was able to solve a complicated mathematical question, I felt amazing because I achieved something. The more complicated the questions, the more joyful I felt.
However, when I didn’t do my homework and copied someone’s answers, I felt terrible. Looking at the answers and not understanding it made me feel worse. And the process of copying was too robotic, I didn’t learn anything from it. Like copying 2x + 2y = 2x + 2y, it means nothing to me, only when I understand it, I become smarter.
Even when I grew up, I had much experience in life where I copied someone work without knowing how to create it.
The consequence of shortcut
I started designing and developing websites 4 years ago. The beginning one year, I wasn’t designing, mostly copying.
I was so focus on the results, but I know I do not have the skills, so I started copying others’ work. Results were great, my clients liked it.
Like working on a mathematical question, my teacher didn’t know how I came out with the answers, yet I got a full score for that question. I used a shortcut to get the score, however, I didn’t benefit from it.
At the end, I still didn’t know how to solve it / I still didn’t know how to design the same website if there wasn’t any similar one.
It is easy if I understand it
Would you rather take $1,000,000 or own the ability to make $1,000,000 today?
I had chosen the first but I am choosing the second.
When I started my journey as a designer, I was still a student. I was making money during school time, taking multiple projects and furthering my studies.
I thought I could become a millionaire in few years. How naive right? I never spend enough time developing my skills, nor building my foundation. All I did was using shortcut methods to produce the work.
And 2–3 years later, I was still who I was, nothing changed. I designed shitty stuff.
Until today, it made me realised how important it is to not go with shortcuts, but building the right foundation.
Even today, my mindset still haven’t completely changed, the after effect of having the shortcut mindset still stuck with me. I tend to do things focus on the results than focusing on the journey.
The journey makes you become more powerful, not the results
“That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” — Friedrich Nietzsch
The only way to become better at math is to solve as many complicated math questions as possible.
The only way to become better at anything is to keep doing it.
Only use shortcut when you understand it
Today, I like to know why and how the great agencies and designers came out with the great work than looking at the results.
howifight.53.com
Like this website, I was amazed by how deep they have to think to come out with the concept.
While running JIN Design these few months, I realised how hard it is to come out with a good a good concept.
It is never too late
My mind used to be fed with laziness that prevented me from going further because it had become so lazy to work harder to produce better results.
I understand I still have long way to go. But, I believe the change of mindset will set me into a right direction.
Knowing the answers doesn’t make it interesting nor challenging, only through learning, trying, failing and succeeding, the journey becomes fun. Knowing the answers without going through the journey makes it worthless.
