Side Projects

"Right thoughts, right words," Right Action by Franz Ferdinand.

So side projects. I have come to discover that having side projects is the most important thing in the world. Okay, not the most important thing in the world. But it's pretty damn important in order for one to stay productive.

You can't really just focus all your efforts doing just one thing forever. You'll get bored. And if you don't have any side projects going on, you'll be wasting your time being bored and not doing anything about it. And that ain't coooool, innit?

Thing is, I sometimes feel like I like doing so many distinct things, and the interest in each thing comes and goes in phases. And this sort of confuses me. It makes me wonder "what am I actually supposed to be doing?" and now I've come to realise that the answer is "all of them".

We all have passions, and some of us (me included) have more than one. A mistake people usually make (me included) is to just choose one passion and discard the rest. I now realise that doing that is a mistake. I can't discard any of my passions, because they are what make me, me. I don;t have to choose between my passions because those choices have already been made. I like doing certain things (writing, music, rugby) and dislike doing certain things (playing football, eating petai, playing football) and that's perfectly fine. All that's left for me to do is to do something with my inclinations. I can't worry about unity from passion to passion, inclination to inclination, piece to piece - because what unifies all of it is the fact they all come from inside me (and from above lah ofkos). I have to trust that one day when I look back upon all of this, it'll all make sense.

Let's look at a couple of my peers. MatLuthfi, his main thing (currently) is getting his Masters degree. And he's definitely an awesome enough graduate, he could even get his PhD before he's 30. His side projects are his videos. And they're mind-blowingly good. I'm sure he has some other side-projects going on too. And they should be mind-blowingly good too.

Aiman Azlan. God, he's such a hardworking guy. He makes videos regularly. He's in the process of writing a book (which a lot of us are waiting for in full anticipation). He writes regularly for langitilahi.com as well as for his own blog. He shares so many useful stuff on his FB page and twitter (@aimanazlan90). I'm sure when he comes back to Malaysia, he'll be going around the country sharing uber-useful and inspirational thoughts with anyone and everyone.

Having multiple projects going on at once is definitely helpful because we can bounce between them. Once we get sick of one project, we can always move on to the other one, then when we get sick of that one, go back to the first one. This way, we'll keep ourselves occupied and interested.

This post was inspired by the book "Steal Like An Artist" by Austin Kleon. He says things a lot more eloquently and concisely than I do, so i recommend the book to everyone who wants to be more creative and productive in their work, whatever their work may be.

(Re-reading this post, all I can say is "berteraboq!")

May peace be upon you.

Cheers!