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

The unglamourous work you love

Published: Thursday, 28 February 2013

I love the process of getting an idea, making a plan around it, and then bringing it to the world.  It usually involves a lot of emailing, fleshing out a plan, meeting with people, learning, designing, daydreaming…

It's not very glamourous, but I just love it so much, and find it so invigorating.

And then if I've done it successfully, good things happen in the world to a lot of people.

And if I've done it unsuccessfully, then I look at what went wrong, and I try again.

It's the whole process of always trying to improve myself, learn more, and then see the impact of that on the world, that gets me excited.

And that's why people tell you to follow your passions.  Because you're going to be spending most of your time working on unglamorous things with a bunch of people who are working on their own unglamorous tasks to make a bigger project happen.  And if you don't enjoy that, well then life's not going to be very fun.

But no one sees that.  All people see is the glamour and glitz of winning awards, receiving publicity, and hobnobbing with celebrities.  But all that glamour takes up such a tiny fraction of it all.  And is just a lot of filming and camera flashes to capture a tiny fraction of time, and then distributing that far and wide.

The work you do though, and bringing that to the world - that takes ages.  And no one would want to capture it, because it's so unglamorous - just doing the same tasks over and over again.

So follow your passions and do what you love.  Because living a successful life isn't about fame or awards or external kudos.  A successful life is one where you live each day striving to make yourself better in an area you're passionate about.

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

  • Nancy Fairfax Churchill Fellowship

    From January to March this year, I travelled to Germany, the UK, the USA and Jamaica to study "Strategies to get girls interested in science,...

  • Manufacturing Leadership Summit, Grand Rapids Michigan

    After a long pandemic hiatus from giving speeches in person, I was invited to be the in-person keynote speaker at The Right Place’s Manufacturing...

  • Good Weekend feature

    "Good Weekend" magazine (included every Saturday in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age newspapers) was interested in what I was up to, so they...

  • World Entrepreneurship Forum

    After Utah, I flew to Lyon, France to speak at the World Entrepreneurship Forum.  It was fantastic to meet with successful entrepreneurs from all...

  • GEDC Diversity Award

    I was awarded the Global Engineering Deans Council (GEDC) Diversity Award for my work with Robogals.  It was sponsored by Airbus.  Here is a photo of...

  • create magazine cover

    I spent the summer working out of the Engineers Australia Victoria office with 20 university students.  As a result they put me on the front cover of...

  • Plane screens

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

  • American Australian Association: Next Generation Leadership Award

    I received an award in New York City from the American Australian Association:  the Next Generation Leadership Award.  As a result, they're planting a...

  • Wow! I'm Young Australian of the Year!

    Wow!  What a huge honour!  I flew overseas in the wee hours of 27 January, and so the whole experience of being named Young Australian of the Year is...

  • Chinese History Museum

    The Chinese History Museum invited me to be part of their exhibition on notable Chinese Australians. In February, over Chinese New Year, my mum came to...

Enter your email address to receive my latest blog posts: 

 

Scroll to Top