• 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

  • Insights from another student entrepreneur…

    Kieran O’Neill started up holylemon.com, a sight that shows funny videos, funny movies and funny videoclips when he was 14, and sold it for US$1.25...

  • The way things go

    You set up a meeting time, ten people email back and say they’re keen, passionate and that they’ll be there.  One person shows up.   So what’s there to...

  • Aipolyglot

    My cofounder in Aipoly is Italian, so we went to Italy to promote, due to popular demand, Aipoly’s availability in 7 languages - English, French,...

  • ABC "Can You Hear Me?"

    ABC made this short video, as part of a three-part series, about my Chinese culture and Brett Leary’s (founder of Virtual Songlines) Aboriginal...

  • Think more

    All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone. Blaise Pascal One of my favourite things to do is to sit there and...

  • Fetch Robotics

    I visited Fetch Robotics as part of a field trip for a Stanford course I took. Fetch Robotics sold to Zebra Technologies for $290 million in 2021....

  • Nexus Impact Accelerator Fellow

    I spent the last few days of February in Washington DC attending the Nexus Global Summit as a Nexus Impact Accelerator Fellow. NEXUS is a global...

  • 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...

  • Phoenix, Arizona

    I love exploring new cities! So I was super thrilled to visit Phoenix in Arizona, and speak at ASQ’s Lean and Six Sigma Conference as their opening...

  • Eating through mosquito nets

    The recurring problem with malaria is that mosquitoes have evolved to be immune to every vaccination ever invented against them.   Humans too are...

Enter your email address to receive my latest blog posts: 

 

Scroll to Top