CHAPTER 1

On the Road to Greatness

You've got to get a kick out of whatever you're doing. I'd rather see you as a happy UPS driver enjoying your customers than a miserable senior accountant at a Fortune 500 company making $70,000 a year. You only get one trip around so you've got to enjoy what you do and who you do it with.
Tom Peters, management expert

Think of the students around you. What personal characteristic do you think will make the difference between those who become great at something and those who never rise above mediocrity? Intelligence? Family background? Confidence?

The answer is surprising. Benjamin Bloom, a professor at the University of Chicago, recently studied 120 outstanding athletes, artists, and scholars. He was looking for the common denominators of greatness and mastery. The study concluded that intelligence and family background were NOT important characteristics for achieving mastery of a desired skill. The only characteristic that the 120 outstanding people had in common was extraordinary drive.

Extraordinary drive is the primary characteristic that powered Jay Leno through 22 years of stand-up comedy before being chosen to succeed Johnny Carson. It's the quality that took Katie Couric from her first job out of college as a desk assistant for ABC, making coffee and answering phones, to the position of cohost of the NBC "Today Show." It's also the primary quality that enabled John Singleton to write three full-length movie scripts during college, one of which was his hit movie, Boyz N the Hood.

Extraordinary drive is exactly what you need to succeed..... "Extraordinary drive" is the magic ingredient that will make your dreams come true...... All you need is a little "superhuman ambition" and the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is yours! Well then, maybe you'd like to know where extraordinary drive comes from. EXTRAORDINARY DRIVE COMES FROM DOING WHAT YOU ENJOY. Doing what you love. Going with your strongest interests. Trying for your deepest aspirations.

When he was young, Jay Leno's two loves were cars and comedy. Katie Couric thinks she's successful primarily because she loves her job of reporting and interviewing people. As for John Singleton, making movies was a dream come true, one he'd had since he was a kid watching movies play on a 70-foot drive-in movie screen outside his window.

The testimonials to the power of doing what you enjoy or dream about don't end there. Mary Ainsworth, a leading development psychologist said, "I've always loved doing the research. The idea that I would get an article published or that my name would become known was never as exciting to me as the research itself." Robin Williams described the year in college that he flunked out of political science but discovered improv theater. "Everything opened up. The whole world just changed in that one year." Oprah Winfrey hosted a talk show and liked it so much she said, "This is what I should be doing. It's like breathing." Top-notch celebrity interviewer Nancy Collins recalls the excitement she felt after her first interview. "I had found It. The thing I loved doing more than anything else in the world." When discussing his success, David Letterman said, "All I ever wanted was to have my own television show."

Why doing what you enjoy is so powerful

Doing what you enjoy propels you to success. How it propels you to success is simple. Success in any endeavor takes a lot of work, and the key to doing a lot of work is liking what you're working on. In the words of author and Stanford University professor Michael Ray, "You know that you are practicing your true vocation when you love all the hard work, responsibility, and tedium that goes with it." Actress Daryl Hannah put it this way, "Acting is my calling. Believe me, if I didn't feel that sense of commitment about it, I wouldn't stay in this business, because there's so much about this life that I don't like."

I have personally learned what a strong difference focusing on what you enjoy makes. My first year in college, I had no sense of the subjects that really interested meÑso I ended up in many classes that bored me to death, one of which was Elements of Nuclear Physics. (Hey, it sounded impressive.) I quickly learned the results of trying to focus on things that don't interest youÑI didn't even turn in my final paper that was worth 50% of my grade! I wanted to be a good student but I found the subject so uninteresting that I couldn't get the final paper done.

Luckily, a few years into college I discovered that I had a strong interest in new technology and hi-tech toys. I loved to read about it, know about it, and be around it. I was an intern at Levi Strauss & Co. when my boss was assigned to set up a videoconferencing system for the company. Videoconferencing! I'd seen it in futuristic movies before and I remembered it as being like a wall-sized TV-phone system that allowed you to talk to people in faraway places just like they were right there in the same room!

We were at lunch when I overheard that he was going to be in charge, and my heart started beating, and my mind started racing with the dream that I could help on the project. When I got back to campus that evening, I went straight to the library to look up videoconferencing articles. I spent the next seven evenings in the library and gathered more than 50 articles and photocopied pages from six books. Then I studied the articles, organized them into a three-ring binder, and took it into Levi Strauss & Co. I set the big black binder on my boss's desk and said, "Maybe this will be helpful in that new videoconferencing project you're going to be in charge of and I'd love to help on it if you need any." His mouth dropped open in amazement as he flipped through the many articles and he finally looked up and said, "Well, you obviously know more about videoconferencing than I do (long pause) and you obviously have a lot of enthusiasm for the subject. How would you like the job as Levi's videoconferencing manager?" My heart probably skipped five beats. When I could recapture my breath I gladly accepted the job and he informed me that my salary would jump from $10 an hour to $25. I thought I'd retire in three months on that salary (at that time in my life my $10 an hour seemed high).

That is the power of doing what you enjoy! My love for new technology gave me the energy to do seven consecutive evenings of library research. If it had been a subject I didn't care about, you couldn't have dragged me into the library. In addition to giving me a tremendous amount of energy, my enthusiasm for the subject matter sent my boss a clear signal that said, "This person would have a lot of good energy for this position." Doing what you enjoy gives you energy and enthusiasm.

Most of us haven't been taught how to discover what we truly enjoy. As a man pointed out to me, "In other countries they tell you what to be when you grow up. In our country they only say, ÔYou can be anything you want.'" Well, how in the world do you figure out what you want to be?! That subject is next.

Discovering your best

I overheard a conversation between two students in a university library one afternoon. The young woman said to the young man, "We're out of here next semesterÑgraduation came so fast." The young man replied, "Yeah, and I still don't know what I want to do for a job. How about you?" Her answer was, "I'm not sure either. I'd like to do something in communications, but I'm not sure what."

Holy hardship, Batman! Graduating without a clear picture of the kind of work you'd enjoy is like getting ready to sky-dive without a parachuteÑyou're guaranteed a hard landing! You can't count on your college courses to reveal much about real-world jobs, so the first thing this book will walk you through is the Quick-Fast, Usually Works, Four-Step Way to Figure Out Your Best Work:

1. Admit what REALLY interests you.
2. Pinpoint your true aspirations.
3. Discover that there are many types of jobs that are related to your interest.
4. Get around your fears and obstacles.