Thursday, April 03, 2008

Pushing yourself to Take

I was reading an interesting post by Seth Godin in his blog on Getting vs. Taking in which the following paragraph struck me

A few people, not many, but a few, take. They take the best education they can get, pushing teachers for more, finding things to do, exploring non-defined niches. They take more courses than the minimum, they invent new projects and they show up with questions.

I used to keep telling people that I work with - you need to leave work everyday asking yourself the following questions
  • Did I learn something new today ?
  • Have I made progress since yesterday ?
  • Have situations improved since yesterday ?
If the answer to any of these questions is "NO" then you did not have a good day at work. I feel that in order to make sure that we have a yes for these questions each day we need to "take" away from our job rather than expect to be "given" at our job. It is unreasonable to expect a supervisor to make sure that you are given opportunities to learn each and every day.

People who "take" are the ones that are recognised since it is going beyond what is expected from them. So it is important to push yourself to "take" all the time.

2 comments:

Waterfox said...

Everyday when I come to office I expect myself to 'take' a bit. This is another thing that many times, I don't even 'get' it!!!

However the questions to ask yourself are important. Pretty nice post!

Ashwin Alexander said...

So true. Taking is actually easy once you realize it's in your best interest to do so. And especially when the giving isn't happening.

You do what you are

In the 2001 movie Along came a spider, there is an interesting quote by Morgan Freeman where he says "You do what you are" and the...