[General] Steve Job's speech

Here is a link to the commencement address by Steve Jobs at Stanford. The speech is organized into 3 stories. I liked the 3rd story the best. It's about death but don't worry it's quite upbeat !!

[General] A half baked theory on success

Has this ever happened to you? You read something or hear something a thousand times and don't give it much thought, but then one fine day when the stars are all aligned you hear it again and you suddenly 'get it'.

This weekend during a drive across Colorado to play a game of Cricket, I tuned in to NPR. The renowned blues guitarist, B.B. King had recently broken ground on a project to build a museum dedicated to him in Indianola,Mississippi and NPR was running a feature on him. Apparently during the 40s and 50s, the Mississippi delta area was teeming with hordes of extremely talented Blues musicians. I might be wrong about the dates but hey it was 6:30 in the morning - it's a miracle that I was even able to drive !! Anyway, the interviewer asked King how was it that among the many talented guitarists who were around at that time only he could make it to the top. After giving some usual celebrity bs about managers/friends/family he said - because I wanted it more.

Isn't that what success in any field really boils down to? Once you have the minimum requirements to succeed in a field (a height > 7ft for basketball, decent analytical skills for academic research) all that really matters is how badly you want to succeed. On the face of it that might seem to be a good thing. After all we cannot acquire talent but we can always make ourselves want something really bad. Then how come it is so hard to have that drive? I am pretty sure most people do not set out to be average. But that's how most people end up as (by the definition of average). Maybe it's because attaining real success in most fields is a marathon, not a sprint. During the course of this long race on many occasions one has the option to drop out of the hard, risky, unpredictable path and head down the safe, comfortable, average road. Most people succumb to this temptation. A select few press on and are successful.

There I said it - my unified theory of success in professional life :) Maybe I should go for more early morning drives from now on.

[MBA] What AdComs want

Interesting link taken from BritChick's blog. It points to an article (slightly old but relevant) about characteristics of successful and unsuccessful MBA candidates - according to AdComs/Career Services.

Reading it made me feel almost ashamed of my good GMAT score. But then I have a crappy undergraduate GPA - so there still is some hope for me :)

[General] Why blog?

I guess, this should have been the 1st post. But anyway here goes.

I do a lot of random browsing (long live free broadband at work) and my daily commute is 1 hr one way so I get to spend a lot of quality time with myself. As if that were not bad enough I will most probably be starting a weekend MBA program at GSB Chicago which will involve lots of air-travel and more quality time with self. So instead of letting all this time go waste, I thought it would be a good idea to organize my thoughts and put them down somewhere. If I can cajole/threaten/emotionally blackmail some traffic and comments to this blog, then maybe I can learn a few things as well.

[MBA] On focus

I recently went through an MBA app experience. It was a part-time, one-school deal so it was neither too grueling nor cathartic. But one aspect of the process has stuck with me. Everyone seemed to be interested in how focused I had been in making my career choices and how every professional step of mine after graduation was infact a small step towards my ultimate goal. Hell, when I graduated I wasn't even sure what my goal was.

Is this kind of long term focus really possible? Do people really know when they graduate what exactly they want to do with their lives? Is that kind of focus even desirable? I mean, doesn't focusing too much too soon reduce the breadth of your knowledge and experience? These are not really rhetorical questions. I'd like to hear opinions - especially from people who answer yes to the second question.

Note: Please go ahead and comment even if you are reading this post a year after it has been posted. Since this is my 1st post that's an extremely plausible scenario.