You probably have heard this a million times. Follow your passion. You should find out what you are passionate about and do that. I myself blogged about passion quite often.
But Mark Cuban have a different view on all this fuss about passion. He believes instead of following your passion (which you can have many), you should follow your effort, things that you spend most of your time on because time is a resource that you don't own.
This makes sense because if you are putting in a lot of time and effort into something, you are definitely passionate about it and most likely you are quite good at it too.
I took a trip down memory lane and realized that besides sleeping, eating, being lazy and gaming, I've spent quite a significant amount of my life building stuff on the web.
Here's a short summary on some of the fun, failed, lame and stupid stuff that I've built.
Highschool years
- A browser plugin review site. Back then, browser plugin was the craze.
- Phrozz.com - Attempted to start a hardware review site with my classmates back then (John & Ed) hoping to get some free hardware.
- Website for my school (KKHS). Also did a Flash intro (yuck) and interactive flash tutorials. Manage to win 1st for design, 2nd for content in the SabahNet Homepage Competition. First sign?
At college/university
- dx's playground - Personal site to mess around with PHP.
- Website for the college's student government so that I can stay in the hostel.
- Mamak.phrozz.com - A site for my Warcraft 3 Guild (Mamak). Scraped Blizzard's site for guild members' rank to display on the site. I think it was on Postnuke.
- My thesis in university was basically building a 'better' CMS (Content Management System)
Entering the workforce
- My first job introduced me to Coldfusion. Built some HR system and CMS with it. I made a simple framework to make it more bearable.
- Managed to convince my boss to let me use PHP. Build CMS for clients.
- Also did some Visual Basic, C# and ASP.net. Decided to go freelance and quit my job.
Flexnode
- Eventnode - Web app to organize events/outings. My first app built with Ruby on Rails.
- Reservation system for a resort. My first paid gig for Flexnode.
- Biznode - Failed attempt to build a project management app like Basecamp.
- Ravejoint - Managed to convince John to join me and build a food/restaurant review site. Plan was to sell ads from restaurants. Didn't work out.
- Switched to consulting and built yet another CMS for Freeform. (KLue, Junkonline & Tongue in Chic)
- Showtimes.my - Our take on how movie showtimes site should be like. Probably our most popular site.
- Zoecity - Joined a US start-up that is based mostly in Kuala Lumpur. Built a few products ranging from social network to news aggregator to social sharing service.
- Startnow.com.my - Attempted to build a site for entrepreneurs and action-takers. Another failed attempt. No traction at all.
- 2 months contract with Says.my. Awesome company and culture.
I left out a few projects here and there but I think it is safe to say that I'm following my effort and it's definitely my passion too.
I'm not a rockstar web developer by any standards but knowing that this is what I love to do and I'm good enough to make a living out of it, is all that I need to keep going.
I really really love building stuff on the web. What about you? Is your effort inline with your passion?