The secret to being great at anything…

There’s a secret to being great…

Back in college, I had a friend who really wanted to be a game developer.

Every time he took a class in programming, he hated it. He didn’t really ever take too kindly to the whole “coding a game” thing.

Yet, every few months or so I’d hear from him that he was wanting to get into the games business or something.

I don’t know what he was doing with his time other than playing a lot of Guild Wars 2 at the time, and maybe drinking.

Couldn’t really tell you.

What I do know is that he never wrote much code.

I think many years later he’s working a help desk and is interested in maybe getting into networking… maybe.

It doesn’t matter though, because he had no real drive or desire to be in game development.

It just wasn’t his thing, no matter how hard he seemingly tried.

Contrast to the people that I’ve worked with who were brilliant.

Every person I can point to as being brilliant at game development, game design, pixel art, or any other pursuit are sort of obsessive about it.

For example, one of my friends is a graphic designer and he actually makes it a point to do two new art pieces every day. One in the morning, and one at night.

I have another friend who is obsessive about programming. He’s always coming up with prototypes, writing software, and solving complex problems all the time.

Both people are kind of world class at what they do because they have an extremely strong pull towards it.

An obsession if you will.

Now, you put either of those people outside of their core competency and the obsession will probably go away. Their skill will probably dry up. For example, they probably didn’t have affinity for music composition, or deep narrative writing.

They’re just really great at the thing that they truly care about, but that’s about it. Too far outside of that and quite frankly, they just aren’t up to par.

Not that it’s necessarily a bad thing…

In the pursuit of greatness, what you choose doesn’t matter at all.

What matters is that you’re obsessive about what you’re gravitating towards.

For me, that’s internet marketing, game development, and empowering fellow game developers. In no particular order.

At the end of the day, it’s all about the drive. Without that fire, you’re going to struggle to enjoy the journey.

And it’s hard to get good at something that you don’t enjoy.

If you want to be great, love what you do. Your success depends on it.