One day, as if overnight, all the airport check-in people and desks disappeared.  In their place appeared computerised self-tagging stations.  Across the expanse where people would usually queue was a scattering of self- check-in stations.  Some were solely Club card activated, and all of the others allowed for a number of inputs.  Result?  Hardly anyone ever needs to wait to check themselves in and get through the process.

The difference is particularly noticeable when you don't travel with QANTAS and have to wait for 30 minutes to check your bag in, amongst a crowd of people that barely moves.

By giving the power to the passengers to check themselves in, attach their own bags tags and answer questions about their luggage, it has made the process of travelling easy.

I saw a talk given by the guy who designed this system a few months after it was implemented.  He said that travelling is painful, and he wanted to make it less painful.

What can you do to make something painful, less painful?

No matter what choices you make every single day, life is unpredictable - everything is unpredictable.

So all you can do is prepare the best you can and whatever happens, happens.  No worries!  :)

For me, it's more of a risk to not put everything on the line to make my entrepreneurial dreams come true.  If I don't risk it, then I'll never know if I could have ever made it.  If I don't risk it, then I will never make it.  Life is hard anyway, why spend it pursuing a job, when just for putting in a little more effort, you could do something that you truly love and are passionate about, and still not be living on the streets!

The odds are stacked against me, but the tiny fraction of a percent that I have in my favour – me working my hardest – is enough for me to risk everything.

You can never win if you never try.  Even the smallest likelihood of success is greater than none.  Even 0.00001% > 0.00%.

I meet people all the time.

In the past it was at entrepreneurship networking events when I was starting up Nudge.  Then, it was at engineering conferences and engineering networking events when I was working on Robogals.  Now, it's because I give a lot of speeches at conferences.

I used to exchange business cards, follow-up with everyone, and add them to the Robogals mailing list.

But then last year, it got to the point where I was giving 3 ~ 4 speeches a week, and didn't have time to follow-up with everyone and add them to the mailing list.  So now I have a huge pile of business cards that I haven't dealt with.  For people I met nearly a year ago.

So I still haven't worked out the best way to keep in touch with people.

But the more people I meet, the more I cherish the handful of people I've met at each conference who changed the way I saw the world, or who I spoke to for really long periods about things that I'm really passionate about (living life powerfully and with integrity/ what's important in relationships with venture capitalists/ entrepreneurship/ education) or nothing in particular at all, but who seemed to be on the same wavelength as me.  It's those who I remember long after I remember what the sessions were about.

I think that's what I try to be when I network - a great conversation that changes the way someone sees the world.

Why, excuses, rationale, justifications, explanations, verbal diarrhoea, reasons, etc.

In the end, the myriad and infinite possibility of reasons why you did something doesn't matter.

It's what you did that matters.

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.