The joy of creating something
It always feels good to accomplish a task. Maybe it’s the happiness to see your hard work pay off, or it’s the accolades you get from others. It might simply be the satisfaction of completing something. Whatever it is, for most tasks this joy is short-lived. But if you ever create something new, something that would last a long time, it would continue to give you joy for a long time.
It’s like active or passive income. Active income is the money you earn by putting in work. If you stop working, you’ll stop earning. This would be the salary you get from your employer. On the other hand, passive income is something that you would get regardless of whether you work or not. For instance, if you write a blog and u are able to monetize it, it will keep generating an income for a long time, without any additional effort.
In my 1st summer at college, as a tech project, I and my friends made a robotic arm that you could control by wearing a glove. We worked really hard on it and spent a lot of sleepless nights, so needless to say we were extremely relieved to see it through. On the last day, we made a cool video about the project and posted it on Youtube
Now, this video wasn’t viral in any sense. I think it got about 100 views on the first day, but even that made us quite happy.
But in the months that followed, I used to get requests from students from all over India, asking about the project, and how they could make it as well. The actual robotic arm had long stopped working. But the video was still doing its thing. The comments on the video were all students praising the project and asking questions. Even years later, something that I created was bringing me joy and satisfaction.
The best part about this is that when we set out to make the project, all we were looking for was to make something to impress our friends. So all the love we got from the video was just a bonus.
These days we focus a lot on instant gratification. Whatever we do, we want results right away. But that never leads to creating anything that will last.