I am halfway through the executive EMBA program at San Diego State and recently wrote a term paper on the meaning of work for my Legal and Ethical Responsibility of Business class. Craig P. Dunn gave excellent lectures on the ethical responsibility portion of the class and really made me think about what I am passionate about. It is a topic we often do not slow down to think about. By the time we are in our forties we end up in a job or career that does not align with what we would have picked when we were teens. We can all think of Bob Parr (Mr. Incredible) in The Incredibles movie sitting at his desk as an insurance claims adjustor. Below I examine what I feel passionate about and how it relates to my work.

There are certain books that we read and we are forever changed. One of the first books that I had that experience with was Cosmos by Carl Sagan. In ninth grade, I took that book to my classes and read it instead of paying attention to my teachers. Cosmos actually describes the greatest men and women of science and their contributions. Each of those scientists discovered a simple truth about the nature of the world. The ideas were so simple and beautiful. However, grabbing those ideas from the ether took a great intellectual leap. These leaps are non-intuitive and these great men and women are honored as geniuses for doing it. Kepler’s three laws of planetary motion exemplify this concept. The three laws are so easy to understand, elegant, and obvious. However, discovering the three laws of planetary motion is considered one of the great intellectual leaps in the history of science.

Another event, like reading the book Cosmos, where I felt forever changed is when I took a three day Robert McKee Story Seminar. In that seminar, I found not just new insights about film and story telling for script writers, but deep insights on the human condition. For example, when making a film, the audience is extremely savvy. They will quickly lose interest if the characters in the story make choices that are not creditable. To make characters believable, you must have them do the minimum under each beat in a scene where they have to make a choice. Now each character has a different minimum and for the axe murderer, the minimum may very well be to chop off the head of his victim. I believe this is the same concept of path of least resistance and why building mechanisms to drive progress is the best way to modify behavior. Jim Collins, the author of Good to Great is a proponent of this concept. If we are the protagonist in our own movie that is our life, then we are going to do the minimum based on our environment. Mechanisms change our environment and make our minimum actions align with our preferred behaviors and outcomes. But the one line from Robert McKee I remember above all else is that art is considered a classic when it expresses an eternal truth that does not lose meaning or diminish over time. A classic stays relevant over the years, much like the great laws of science.

Am I passionate about science or am I passionate about film? I realized after some consideration that I am actually passionate about what is common in my approach to both film and science. In fact it is how I approach software engineering and everything else in life. I am passionate about finding the simple structure and truths hidden behind complexity. I am passionate about thinking about the essence of things and having the epiphany and deep insight of a simple truth. I must then be able to express that truth in the physical world in order to be satisfied. With software, I am in bliss when I can do this. My success with software is that I have the ability to reach a point of knowing the deep meaning of a design prior to the actual implementation. When I have been miserable is when we are stagnated and are not moving forward or building software without thinking it through. I am a fan of Joseph Campbell who said “Follow Your Bliss!” which perfectly describes what this seeking a truth and expressing it the world means to me.

Categories: Journal, Notes to myself