Ahmad Awais

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Confused About Your Career Path? Read This!

Ahmad AwaisAhmad Awais

Hey there, YOU ARE WRONG!!! (Yes! this is a strongly opinionated article, my opinion, which might not get me featured at Smashing Magazine, but it’s totally worth your time).

Being Human? Are You?#

Stop jerking around and start working over something which really matters. You cannot live your life over ideas you feel passionate about. You need to define a particular goal, then work over a particular skill to achieve that goal, then you need to build products. Build minimum viable products call them side projects. Users’ feedback will guide you towards the improvement of your portfolio. Remind yourself again and again, what is your agenda, what is your goal. I myself get distracted in a week or two, it’s called being human.

Be Precise#

Think of something which can make you realize what’s wrong. Never sacrifice your ethics over success, never earn the way you feel bad about. When something feels wrong, try to find something or someone to reset yourself, be it by calling your mother by talking about it, or anyone else. Make sure, you keep working for one and one single goal.

Years will pass by, things you once felt passionate about will no more make you motivated enough to feed your creative sense, be predictive about such conditions, find solutions or talk to someone who might have been through such conditions in their lives. You gotta try hard, you gotta make it work, you need to make it work. Be that precise about one single goal in your life.

If you think your startup will make you successful, define what success means to you. You’ll be amazed how aimless you were before defining what success meant to you. Is it Money? Is it Building something? Is it having something? What is it?

How Much You Want to Earn in Your Life?#

Do the math, take your case in your hands. Predict the next 60 years of your life. You might be thinking, what did you just say? The next 720 months you plan to live. Think of your expenses. Think what an ideal monthly expense means to you? How much would you want to spend per month without thinking twice? Multiply that number with 720 months (equals to 60 years). The answer to this question will tell you how much you want to earn in your life. You’ll be amazed because it would be pretty low (most certainly if you are an optimist). You’ll feel motivated enough, you will find yourself in a position to achieve it, heck you might even think of beating this target. How about you meet this target in the next 30 years instead of 60.

Motivation, punctuality, thinking, creativity and then success. All of it is possible only when you are focused, 100% invested in a goal, you so desire to follow. This goal could be anything. It could be just to earn money. People will call you crazy, they’ll tag me greedy, but I don’t care, you shouldn’t either, sometimes at the end of the day it is all about money. But you could have any goal and I mean it, ANY GOAL! Is that emphasised enough? Your goal should be specific enough for you to actually make something out of it.

Let’S Put an End to This#

I can go on and talk a lot more. But I think it’s enough free advice for one day. Then again, I need to shift my focus back to what I should be doing. It’s an opinion piece, don’t get confused, just do it. You need to exist before you want to grow. You can only grow if you exist in the market. How about you start today and build something in a single week, or be it a month.

Launch early, get feedback, be your own competition, stay motivated and finally keep adjusting your focus manually.

Have any comments? Rants? What else? Shoot away!

Founder & CEO at Langbase.com · Ex VP DevRel Rapid · Google Developers Advisory Board (gDAB) founding member. 🧑‍💻 AI/ML/DevTools Angel InvestorAI/ML Advisory Board member San Francisco, DevNetwork

🎩 Award-winning Open Source Engineer & Dev Advocate 🦊 Google Developers Expert Web DevRel 🚀 NASA Mars Ingenuity Helicopter mission code contributor 🏆 8th GitHub Stars Award recipient with 3x GitHub Stars Award (Listed as GitHub's #1 JavaScript trending developer).

🌳 Node.js foundation Community Committee Outreach Lead, Member Linux Foundation, OpenAPI Business Governing Board, and DigitalOcean Navigator. 📟 Teaching thousands of developers Node.js CLI Automation (100 videos · 22 Projects) & VSCode.pro course. Over 142 Million views, 22 yrs Blogging, 56K developers learning, 200+ FOSS.

✌️ Author of various open-source dev-tools and software libraries utilized by millions of developers worldwide WordPress Core Developer 📣 TEDx Speaker with 100+ international talks.

As quoted by: Satya Nadella · CEO of Microsoft — Awais is an awesome example for developers.
🙌 Leading developers and publishing technical content for over a decade 💜 Loves his wife (Maedah) ❯ Read more about Ahmad Awais.

👋… Awais is mostly active on Twitter @MrAhmadAwais

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Comments 14
  • Mujeeb Ur Rehman Sultani
    Posted on

    Mujeeb Ur Rehman Sultani Mujeeb Ur Rehman Sultani

    Reply Author

    I never read such strong and full of knowledge words before I think as a Asian guy we all must read and understand what Ahmad Awais want to tell us. It is not the words of mind but it emerges from the heart.

    I am specially thankful to the writer of this encouraging article.

    Best Regard
    Sultani


    • AhmadAwais
      Posted on

      AhmadAwais AhmadAwais

      Reply Author

      I get queries like these a lot. I think there is no guidance at when it comes to the confusion about choosing the right career path. I’d give anything to get back all those years I spent working without a workflow, without the right goal, goals which do not matter any more. I hope this article helps.


  • Amna Liaqat
    Posted on

    Amna Liaqat Amna Liaqat

    Reply Author

    This right here is one of the best pieces of advices I ever read.

    Motivation, punctuality, thinking, creativity and then success. All of it is possible only when you are focused, 100% invested in a goal, you so desire to follow. This goal could be anything. It could be just to earn money. People will call you crazy, they’ll tag me greedy, but I don’t care, you shouldn’t either, sometimes at the end of the day it is all about money. But you could have any goal and I mean it, ANY GOAL! Is that emphasised enough? Your goal should be specific enough for you to actually make something out of it.


    • Aamir
      Posted on

      Aamir Aamir

      Reply Author

      Amazing!!! Thanks for sharing!


  • Hammad Zafar
    Posted on

    Hammad Zafar Hammad Zafar

    Reply Author

    I don’t normally comment at blogs, but this article is provoking. Thanks for what you shared. Keep sharing.


  • Muhammad Tehseen
    Posted on

    Muhammad Tehseen Muhammad Tehseen

    Reply Author

    In short,I would rather say:-
    Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude


  • Zia Shiekh
    Posted on

    Zia Shiekh Zia Shiekh

    Reply Author

    Ahmad Awais I have had been following for quite some time now. You are my role model. I wish to be like you. I want you to know that your selfless sharing is appreciated a lot here.


  • Haseeb Ahmad Ayazi
    Posted on

    Haseeb Ahmad Ayazi Haseeb Ahmad Ayazi

    Reply Author

    Truly amazing. We have to prioritize our goals. Without it we can’t achieve anything.


    • AhmadAwais
      Posted on

      AhmadAwais AhmadAwais

      Reply Author

      You should have one single goal. Not goals. That’s all about it.


  • Muhammad Waqas
    Posted on

    Muhammad Waqas Muhammad Waqas

    Reply Author

    Great Ahmad Awais bro!
    You’ve re-started the spark inside many like me.
    Million prayers and best wishes for you.
    From a couple of days, I’m again trying to stay focused (and this time focusing more on my study), wish me luck :)
    I am willing to start developing very soon (right after the exam-session)


  • Kiran Amjad
    Posted on

    Kiran Amjad Kiran Amjad

    Reply Author

    Thanks for the advice. Your experience is worth a lot. I’d recommend people at Smashing Magazine to share it, at their social accounts. It is totally worth it.


  • Samiullah Khan
    Posted on

    Samiullah Khan Samiullah Khan

    Reply Author

    As we are allowed to be as much opinionated as we can so I would say that this post would never age and would never be considered outdated. Some of my takeaways are, everyone of us are somewhat going through this stage, keeping up with goal all the time is become tedious and boredom but can be balanced with motivation and encouragement.


  • Aly Ahmed
    Posted on

    Aly Ahmed Aly Ahmed

    Reply Author

    Such a brilliant article can be definitely featured on SmashingMagazine. ;) Thumbs up!


  • Subash
    Posted on

    Subash Subash

    Reply Author

    Excellent advice to all the new developers and the experienced ones. In fact, these life skills are required for a successful career. Thanks for your encouraging and motivating words.