The day you leave …

What can you take away, and what can you leave behind?

I ask these two questions to all my team members and I ask them to myself constantly. I even ask the questions to new members on their first day of joining KMS.

“Think about the day you will leave KMS in two years. What can you take away with you? What can you leave behind?”

Impermernence in the fundamental nature of life, of being. So it is not a matter of “if” we will leave this job, it is a matter of “when”.

Most suffering and workplace drama are caused by the illusion that we will still be here next year.

But you may not be here next year. You can’t take all these social vanity with you: the seating close to window, the bigger office and the lofty title etc.

What you can take away are the psychological and mental growth, the skills you learned and mastered, and the stories you accumulated by doing something interesting, challenging and worthy.

What can you leave behind? Can you make this place slightly better, now? Can you be nicer to that intern today, explain our coding best practice with more empathy? Can you build something useful for customers, for your teammates? Can you make a positive difference to their life?

Can you make the world slightly better when you leave? Can you leave behind something that are useful, beautiful, that can last for awhile?