A Commitment – What It Takes

We all know of busy people who get a lot of things done and accomplish a lot of things. They seem to be successful at almost everything they decide to do. We feel inferior to these people because they seem to have so much talent. But is it really talent or is it something else?

What does it take to be a success at something? Some of it is brains. Some of it is training. But most of it is a commitment. With a strong enough a commitment, brains and training deficiencies are rapidly overcome.

The same sort of commitment applies to a sport or a hobby. You don’t get on the Olympic Team without some sort of commitment of a major sort. You don’t become a home computer expert or programmer without a conmitment as well.

This was brought out as a lesson again in the home computer boom of the early 1980’s. It was the ‘in’ thing back then to have a home computer. Most of us didn’t know if we wanted to make that sort of commitment in dollars until the price of computers come down quite a bit. Many of us first took the plunge when the price got below the $100 mark and bought that first ZX81 or TS1000. It was sort of fun joining a User Group and rubbing elbows with a lot of other neophytes. It was nothing to have over 100 people attending a user meeting.

Where are they now? All these people? How many are still active in computering?

Some went on to other computers as they found they had an experimenters toy and needed something more. I guess many expected a lot more for their small investment than they got. So you expected a disk drive, monitor, printer and computer all for under $100? Every once in a while we get a person at a meeting that just picked up a ZX81 or TS1000 at a garage sale and is a bit shocked when told what all else he needs for what he wants to do with it. These people never wanted to be programmers or experimenters but only users. Fine, but they are still in computering as they still use one albeit not their ZX81. They are still active in computering. We don’t count them as being people who fell by the wayside.

Unfortunately, the boom also brought in a lot of people who weren’t serious about computers. The mental bend of most of those kinds of people would be to rather watch TV than to do any sort of mental improvement such as computer programming with the screen. It takes a strong commitment to become a programmer just as it does to become an MD, lawyer, or PhD. Lots of would-be students don’t seen to have sufficient commitment and give up at the first difficulty. I’ve noticed this with college students as well as with hobbists.

The interesting thing about working the brain is that, like physical exercise, it improves it. You can’t wear out your brain although as much as some people use it, it withers away from thing disuse. The other thing about the brain is that it does tire of the same thing after a while so shifting it to something else refreshes it. I work at one mental thing at work and another thing at home. Much like using different muscles. Of course, solving computering problems is a bit akin to climbing Everest. Why do we do it? Because the problem is there and becomes a personal challenge. We don’t do it because it has already been done. There is a real sense of achievement in solving a really tough computering problem. Your really tough problem may not be as tough as my really tough problem but the sense of achievement is just as great.

Anyone who has ever tackled machine code know the exhillerating sense of achievement when the $%&() finally works.

But the same sort of sense of achievement was around when you tackled that Basic problem as well.

How many ZX and TS machines are gathering dust in attics and basements or end up in garage sales? Some of this is understandable ay they were a bit unwieldly and people outgrew them and needed something a bit more professional. But many people never outgrew them and just gave up after a halfhearted attempt. Over half fall by the wayside but a few come back for a second try and then usually succeed as they finally realize the commitment they have to make. Unfortunately, too few come back for that second try.

Lack of commitment seems to be the pervading way of life for a lot of people in the US. The phenomena is probably a national sentiment. Countries where people have a stronger sense of commitment are not only gaining on the US, but in many cases have surpassed us. Lack of commitment is a fast way of becoming second or even third rate. Many people want a big paycheck but don’t want to do anything much to earn it or even do any study to qualify for it. It takes quite a slow learner to be so slow you can’t teach him/her anything, I bend over backwards for students who really want to learn, but are having a hard time at it. I don’t go out of my way for those that don’t want to learn. Commitment is something you grow up with. It’s something you and you alone can do. But you have to do it to achieve anything worthwhile. (Being a teacher, myself, I must agree with Dr. Lloyd Dreger here. I am the same way about my students as well. -David)

You can learn about commitment the easy way by going after some purposeful goal, becoming what you want to be, or you will learn about it the hard way by never accomplishing anything in your life and then wondering why you never did. The road to… is paved with good intentions, etc.

Do something useful with that spare time you all have. A person once asked me how much time I spent at a computer during the week at home. I thought for a while adding up the hours mentally that I had spent in the previous two weeks and come up with an answer of 40 hours a week. Everyone has more free time than that every week away from his job unless he is a workaholic putting in 70 hour weeks. If you spend from 6 to 11 every night and all day Saturday and Sunday you have over 60 hours of free time to spend and still leave time for eating and sleeping. What you do with this free time is up to you. You can do something useful or you can fall asleep watching TV–must have been a really exciting program! Granted that the 40 hour weeks at the computer were an intensive period where I really was working on something interesting but that still means I had 20 hours to do the lawn, clean other things as well like mow the lawn, clean the house, etc. Nobody says you have to make that full a commitment to something but it shows what can be done if you really want to. Again, it is up to you.

One word of caution, there can be such a thing as too much commitment if it’s for the wrong thing. If something is a hobby, don’t nake the commitment to your hobby stronger than your commitment to your work. have seen that end up in disaster for people. Work comes first!