• Blog
  • Archives
  • Bio
  • Awards
  • Speaking
  • Book
  • Contact

Cool enough

Published: Friday, 22 March 2013

I find that many people my age are quite lost.  They don't know what to do with their lives, they don't know what their dream job is, they don't know what their purpose in the world is, and they don't know the meaning of life.  And that all concerns them.

So they meander from one temporary thing to another that doesn't require too much responsibility, nor too much commitment.

You're going to be alive for decades longer, and the age expectancy keeps increasing.  Or you're not.

Don't worry about what you will achieve in your life and what legacy you will leave behind.  Instead, figure out where you will be in 3 months.

At the same job?  Still studying?

Studying a language overseas?

Working on freelance gigs?

Your next project?

Wrapping up this project?

Organising a conference?

Life may be decades longer.  Life may be a century longer.  Or life may be a week longer.  You never know when you will live and when you won't.  So stop trying to figure out what your ultimate dream will be, choose a project, and start pursuing that for the next three months.  Your project doesn't have to be your ultimate legacy or represent your ultimate meaning in life.  That's too much pressure.  Just choose a project that's "cool enough" for you, your skills and where you are in life.  Putting too much emphasis and pressure on it makes it too scary for you to start.  "Cool enough" could be something you learn a new skill out of, (such as management, leadership, coding, building, speaking), it could be a course, it could be travelling, or it could just be a project that sounds exciting.  By pursuing "cool enough" projects three months at a time, you will find meaning in your life, you will create a legacy, and you will find purpose.  Not in a big moment of epiphany, but in many glorious unravelling of moments.

About Me

Marita ChengForbes named me a world's top 50 woman in tech & 30 Under 30. I founded Robogals and Aipoly and was Young Australian of the Year 2012. Currently working on robotics company Aubot. I'm the youngest Member of the Order of Australia (AM) and I give speeches around the world.

I tweet @maritacheng and I'm on Facebook.

Subscribe

Enter your email address to receive my latest blog posts: 

 

Random Articles

  • SBS Small Business Secrets

    SBS came and filmed a short segment at the 2Mar Robotics office for their SBS Small Business Secrets program.  It aired on 23 October. Watch the...

  • My lockdown life

    Lockdown is certainly a change of pace for me. I used to fly around the world twice a month! Now I’m stuck inside my 768 sq ft apartment for months...

  • Asian Society Game Changer Award

    I was named an Asian Society Game Changer Award winner alongside architect IM Pei (Lifetime Achievement Award), movie director Zhang Yimou, and the...

  • Plane screens

    Walking down the aisle on an international flight, everyone is watching something different.  Whether it's the most popular television drama,...

  • Short Black | Sandra Sully podcast

    The lovely Sandra Sully invited me to appear on her podcast, Short Black, after we spoke at Vogue Codes together in 2018.  Check out our conversation here: ...

  • One meeting can change your life

    Go out and make those connections, meet people, have conversations. It may land you a dream job.  My friend got an engineering internship in China by...

  • Don't focus: search for something that sticks

    During my second to fourth years of university, I worked on Nudge, mew and Robogals.  I did various projects with all those initiatives over that...

  • Show up

    Woody Allen once said that "eighty percent of success is showing up." To me, that means, you go to the meeting about the project.  You're there...

  • Questacon

    Gave a speech for IPAA ACT to 280 people at the CEOs and Young Professionals Network Breakfast.  It was a delight to find my friends at Questacon had a...

  • YouthActionNet Global Fellowship Day 3: A lot of heart

    Today, the most interesting part of the day was a session called "Open Space", where some people wrote topics they were interested in discussing on...

Enter your email address to receive my latest blog posts: 

 

Scroll to Top