Comments on: Complacency

By: GreyMatter » Fighting Complacency

GreyMatter » Fighting Complacency — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 10:14:14 +0000

[...] few days ago, I encountered a blog post by Jin Yang entitled ‘Complacency‘. In it, Jin writes about his early years growing up in China, and then moving to the US [...]

By: Naveen Bachwani

Naveen Bachwani — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 05:53:01 +0000

Excellent, excellent post!

I have seen countless bright folks (friends and family) with immense potential, waste away their talent by becoming complacent. So far, I’ve managed to buck that trend and it’s been a conscious effort to do so.

I especially liked your references to how those of us who’re reading blogs in general are already doing at least one thing to stay current and relevant, and how it also becomes our duty to help others along the way by exposing them to such a way of Life.

Keep the torch burning… Subscribing to your feed, now…

By: Chris Ballance

Chris Ballance — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 02:46:10 +0000

Coming up with 57.0750 really made me think. I haven’t solved a good puzzle in ages. You’re right, it is easy to become complacent (and reliant on a calculator for things that you should be able to do in your head). Thanks for the reminder that this that we can all do better.

By: Tyler

Tyler — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 09:06:24 +0000

The Rhythm of Life by Matthew Kelly addresses alot of the same stuff you’re talking about here. You should give it a read.

By: Oscar

Oscar — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 15:43:14 +0000

I love your post. I read it to remind me not to be complacent. Lately I’ve realized what I’ve always heard and been told. At the core of me I relized that the only way to fight complacency is to want something and to work through *anything* to get that. If you don’t have that dream, the goal –some call it, then you have nothing to strive for or even try so why would you. Especially like you point out, when in this culture things are relatively “easy” to get if you just want to be average.

By: Sula

Sula — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 19:48:41 +0000

I loved you posting. I am from Ecuador where I attended a German School. Although it was not as strict as you describe yours, we had to study every single day in case we were randomly chosen for a graded review. If we had bad grades, we had to repeat the whole school year! That “training” served me in my university days in the U.S. where keeping a high GPA seemed like a walk in the park. I was able to obtain scholarships thanks to my good grades. I admit I have fallen into complacency myself. Articles like yours and finding people like you remind me how awesome it is to live a life with passion, learning new things every day and striving to be better. Thanks

By: Too Smart

Too Smart — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 18:02:59 +0000

[...] in a field I do not like. A job I am still in today. All because I was lazy. I was, and still am, complacent. If I was smart, I would have recognized the power of what I had, and used it in a much better [...]

By: Jin

Jin — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 03:57:57 +0000

@Kim, I’m not a morning person. :) Thanks.

@Nathan, I’ll call Liam Neeson so you can get some Batman training.

By: Nathan Bowers

Nathan Bowers — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 00:47:15 +0000

The real answer is “hey, that’s the leaf from the Apple logo!”

Great story Jin. Enjoyed reading it. I’m also facing the “okay, I’m almost mid 30s, and things are good, but I’m not Batman yet.”

By: Kim H

Kim H — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 23:09:16 +0000

Wow – I didn’t receive problems like that until my first year of Calculus in college.

Learning standards, markup, and the many ins and outs of CSS is only the beginning of web design; the entire life of web design and development is constant learning – as you mentioned in a past post it’s also about the taste of the designer, but it is also learning what is up to standards as of now.

The indolence is certainly difficult though. Whenever I began college, I had just gotten out of an easy ride through high school. Granted I took the most advanced courses I could (and did well), but finding the motivation to do my college work was… difficult, to say the least, and my grades suffered for it. Same when I worked from home; some days I felt like taking a “break” because I’d stayed up late the night before doing whatever. I’ve learned to overcome this sloth though through discipline; even on my days off from here at the office, I wake up to an early alarm clock every morning and go to bed at a certain time, and every day after work I do some coursework or housework, and client work.

But as Dmitry said, you had motivation because of this goal, and that’s where drive comes from. The drive to be a better designer in order to have clients (and a job), and in the case of a college student, the drive to finish classes to have a good career or graduate school, or in my case doing client work + cooking for myself and my fiance + work + everything else (I’m a couch potato otherwise).

This is a very good post though; I really enjoyed reading this slice of life.

Also, not sure if anyone else answered it, but 57.0570 was what I got for the answer :)