One rule to be successful: SUCK AT YOUR JOB

You may have read hundreds of thousands of articles on how to be successful, what brought success to the successful people, or what Bill Gates still do and Steve Jobs refused to do on their course to the high-rollers club. But tell me honestly, have these articles made you a millionaire yet or raised your salary to a 6-digit number? As you are reading this, it’s safe to assume that they haven’t.

The objective of this article is not to inspire you lower your performance or to discourage your success as the title refers to, but to make you have a closer look at your inner self. Nor will this article eat up a truckload of your time elaborating the “shortcuts to success” that every “How to…” article blabbers on.

 

Mistakes are the ugly parents that give birth to success.

 

So, is it really necessary to suck at your job to be successful? No, it definitely isn’t. To grow your career, you have to focus on the skillset that earn your bread and try harder and harder everyday to excel at it. Then why am I telling you to suck at your job? You have to BELIEVE that you are not good enough at what you do. Confidence is necessary, but in another way. I’ll be talking about it later.

Now, let’s come to the point. What is “Success”? It’s a goal a few have achieved, and others crave to be like those few by blindly following them. But what did those few had to face on their way to the top? The only thing they have in common is- They all made mistakes, and paved their ways out of them! We tremble at the name of mistakes, we take it as the exact opposite to success. But the fact is, these mistakes are the ugly parents that give birth to success. If you want to be like Bill Gates, google him. And the first three quotes of him you will find below his picture on the right sidebar will tell you-

 

Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.

 

Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.

 

It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.

 

I guess, Bill proves the point better than anyone else on this tiny planet.

Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Get used to suck at your job. Don’t boast of your achievements. Imprint in your mind that “I’m not good enough”. Never be satisfied of your progress. And that is when, your confidence will be needed most. It will keep your engines running on the turbulent times of fragmenting yourself. You will feel the hunger to learn more only when you realize that you are not good at something and there is still a long path to perfection left. When you will be learning, you will start finding the missing pieces of the puzzles that were slowing your development. And when you have finished learning about your shortcomings, you will be well aware of your true potentials and will be prepared to explore the uncharted territories you feared to step foot on.

 

Instead of following an idol, try and be an idol for everyone else.

 

Don’t follow the path other people follow. That makes you a sheep of the herd. Everyone has got unique sets of problems, and the solutions to those are unique too. Try and pave your own ways out of your problems and learn which way suits you most. Instead of following an idol, try and be an idol for everyone else. Cause the one’s we idolize today, rarely followed others. Or else they would have ended up being another sheep of the herd just like us, looking for solutions from other people’s problems.

But does that mean you have to throw away your inner peace? No. Give time to your family and friends. Talk to your parents every once in a while. Get your inner peace from your closest ones, but not from your job. Let your hunger for perfection haunt you like Gunnery Sergeant Hartman from the 1987’s Vietnam war classic “Full Metal Jacket”.

Oh, and don’t forget to take some time off for yourself. Cause, at the end of the day, we are humans, not machines. Burning out is never a good thing. You may watch the movie “Full metal Jacket” this weekend. It’s a really good one!

Faizus Saleheen,
COO, Authlab Limited.

[This article was also published in Medium, follow us there]