My Intersection
We all want to find knowledge areas and people who inspire us. A few months ago, I watched a documentary called Jiro Dreams of Sushi. In a nutshell, the movie tells the story of a Japanese senior that did what he was fond of since he was young: sushi. To be honest, the movie may be a bit boring at some points, but in general, I got extremely inspired by Jiro, today a world renowned sushi chef. Why? Because he likes what he does so much, that he dreams about new sushi recipes!
It happens to a lot of software developers, and it happens to me sometimes as well. Dreaming about solutions for a coding problem, for a bug, dreaming of the User Interface of an app. This week, while I was half awake half asleep because of my 6-day-old son, it happened again. But it was not anything technical - it somehow explained to me, gave me the answer to one of the questions I have been wondering recently: what is the connection between the areas of knowledge that I love? What is the similarity between Software Development, Health Care, and Education (specially non-formal education methods).
I am reading a book called Start With Why, by Simon Sinek - among other things, he explains the true source of inspiration that makes us wake up everyday to go to work, and why it is so important to do what we love. And related to reading this book, the question gets stronger every single day - and in this dream I had a hint to the answer.
Here it goes: all the 3 areas mentioned - Software Development, Health Care, and Education - deal with already existing people or things with a high potential, and provide a beautiful result out of it! Software can take the existing physical hardware and helps people’s lives. Medicine deals with ill patients and heals them. Finally, Education allows us to transform small animals into well behaved children, explore their intelligence, make them grow mentally, and make their family, friends and teachers proud of him.
Can more things be connected to this idea? Of course. Maybe this answer was not so special? Maybe. But I am still impressed with and excited that it happened while I was not awake; that means it came from the depth of my mind. I am happy I found the common ground for these passions. That is what I am calling, from now on, my intersection. Even though I do not have “the answer” for this intersection, it already bore fruits - my jewish-oriented iOS applications available in the App Store are some examples.
To end this blog post, I will mention one of my preferred Apple keynotes - neither because it was a groundbreaking product, nor any super exciting new class of product. In his second to last keynote, in March 2011, Steve Jobs gave a small speech about Apple’s DNA to finish the iPad 2 announcement. I saw that special event’s streaming live, and I remember as it was today what Jobs said (It is worth watching the whole 3 minutes, but I will mention the most inspiring excerpt):
It’s in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough – it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our heart sing and nowhere is that more true than in these post-PC devices.
And what about you, have you already found your why? Have you found what inspires you and makes you jumping out of the bed to go to work? Have you found what you love to dream of?