i’ve tried re-writing this to find the right angle for this, but can’t seem to find one.
so here it is.
i firmly believe we should enjoy the journey more than the outcome.
i feel that we’re too focused on the outcomes and dismiss the journey, and these are two common scenario i’ve experienced or observed.
why bother
“i want do [something i want to do] but it has been done before so i don’t do it.”
“this can be one shotted by an llm so what’s the point of doing it?”
it’s been done before so why bother? and i get it.
but i’d say if you care about the stuff you want to do, the cost isn’t too high such as time spent, monetary wise, opportunity cost and so on. we should embark on accomplishing it.
why? because what i want is the learnings from the journey. it doesn’t matter if it’s been done before or the llm can do it, because i didn’t do it and therefore it’s worth a shot.
for example, this topic of outcome over journey has been written to death.
but i still venture to do it because i want to articulate my own thoughts on it and it helps me clearer about what i think about it
or even text editors. so many of them such as obsidian, logseq, notepad++ and so on.
they’re all just text editors at the end of the day, but the author decides to go ahead and create one with their own opinion anyways.
even if it doesn’t work out. they still learnt and understand how to create one. this knowledge stays with them and who knows it can come in handy some other day.
now what
“i finally completed the task!” “i ran a marathon!” “i did x or y!”
and we’ll finally be eternally happy! we celebrate as we should, but it only lasts for a short while and we feel normal again.
maybe sometimes even feeling empty after achieving the thing we wanted so badly.
so what is this emptiness?
i see it as conditionally tying our state of being to our outcomes, and what happens if we don’t achieve it?
are we going to be sad all the time? it doesn’t make much sense.
in this case, we give little credit to the journey we been through
the journey is makes up 99% of the outcome, all the work we do leads to it.
so we should learn how to enjoy it and celebrate the small wins along the way.
the outcome is just a side effect of the work you put in.
for example, running a marathon. the marathon is a day, but six months out from it there are early morning, structuring your days around the runs to hit, having proper fuelling and so on. this process of preparation happens for six months and by the end of it you’ve probably became quite a different person due to the commitment and the journey you’ve been through!
end
so regardless of either scenario i hope that we remind ourselves to enjoy the journey because the outcome is only a short moment but the journey is the bulk of the process.
whatever we pick up through the journey be it good or bad, is part of the experience and it’ll be internalised within you. that is invaluable and nobody can take it away from you.