Rob Hyodo

We’ve all made mistakes while working too fast, often when trying to meet a deadline. I can attest to the old saying, “Haste makes waste.”

I sprinted through a task which I should have walked through to ensure I met all objectives. At one point, it seems I did complete the task as intended as I checked my work… on a staging site. I then moved my work to the production site, but the update failed to complete. I did not check the contents of the staging site.

I did the work on a Sunday evening and was eager to meet some friends. I also wanted to get the work done, but was watching the clock. You could say my priorities were mixed as I tried to accomplish two tasks and both were important to me.

Yet I failed at both. I erred on my delivery of my task and I was late for my evening engagement. To ensure success in at least one task, I could have either A) let my buddies know I could be late, or may not come at all and ensure the work was done properly or B) put work by the wayside (it was the weekend).

A) would be my choice. I value my friends’ trust in my to be there when I say I would, but I also need to value the trust my colleagues have in me.

To slow down, breath, check and double check my work would have ensured success and preserved trust amongst my work peers. Then a simple call my friends to say, “I’m on my way,… had to take care of business,”… they would have understood AND I could be a much safer driver! (Rushing to get “over the hill” from San Jose to Santa Cruz is not safe!)

Lesson learned to preserve trust and turn out quality.

In February this year, I had a work objective to integrate and maintain a blog into our company website. After receiving feedback that a senior in the organization would not approve, I took it upon myself to register a domain (ecdguy.com) and blog on my own.

I got nowhere fast. It was something I had to do with my own money and time after hours.

Furthermore, I felt my domain name was goofy. I think anything-guy.com sounds silly. I then decided to use my existing robhyodo.com domain after obsessing over the “right” domain name.

I continued attempting to post, but industry news proliferates quickly and people have their favorite places for the news I would merely abbreviate.

Thus, upon reflecting on many things as I recover from illness this Labor Day weekend, I’ve decided to take back my own domain and let it evolve into something more personal (what a blog should be). I want to keep this blog related to my work experiences and rather than continuing to blog about online video, I will write about my experiences and learnings while working at any job (past, present and thoughts of future endeavors).

I do manage another blog (illumik.com) where my posts are closer to the heart. There, I write more freely about my thoughts, reflections and passions, keeping things more in-the-moment. (Oh, and I have a private LiveJournal for my closest friends where I share more intimate details…)

Maintaining my two blogs can be an indication that I haven’t quite figured out my life career goals and that’s ok. Most people still have 1) work and 2) passions, which are kept separate. My goal (and the goal of many) is to merge the two in some way. We’ve heard it all before: Make money doing what you enjoy doing.

It’s not that I don’t enjoy what I’m doing, but I have passions that, if I could earn a living from it, wouldn’t seem like work at all. And my work would be so much a part of my life that my “work day” would never end. I would simply do what I enjoy and earn a living from that. Doesn’t that sound nice??