Loving What You Do

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.”
- Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple

I came across this quote from Steve Jobs today, and it really hit home. I think he's right in that, because work is such a big part of our lives, it should be something that we really enjoy doing. When the work I'm doing feels "right" to me, I get into that thing that many people call "the zone." At that point, "work" doesn't feel like work, because it is as enjoyable as "play."

All of this got me thinking about the "work" that I do with FileMaker. Sure, there are times where doing FileMaker development can be very frustrating (do you know how many times a day I'd like to be able to do a real SQL query against a FileMaker database?!?). But most of the time -- for me anyway -- it really is a joy to use FileMaker. It is typically very fast, reliable, and flexible. And the advancements that have been made to FileMaker over the past few years (especially those made since v8) make using FileMaker even more enjoyable than ever before.

There's a very interesting (and large) list of FileMaker feature requests over at FMPug. Imagine how amazing future versions of FileMaker will be if even a handful of these requests are implemented!

Ok, enough said... Back to "work!"

FileMaker Addict Changing Course

The original intent of FileMaker Addict was for it to be a blog that showcases people in the FileMaker community -- developers, trainers, authors, users, anyone doing interesting work with FileMaker, etc. The blog has been a series of interviews with some people that you probably recognize and some that you might not.

All of their stories are interesting for one reason or another. Some happened to become "FileMaker people" out of coincidence (though some might argue that there is no such thing as coincidence) while others have been longtime IT folks who encountered (and fell in love with) FileMaker.

Regardless, all of the people that we've interviewed are passionate about the product. And while it is by no means a perfect database, it continues to improve by leaps and bounds with each new release. And all of us are excited about what might happen to FileMaker next. Those of us who have been using it for a longtime still remember the days when the product wasn't relational -- and also remember all of the hoops that we had to jump through to make FileMaker act like it was relational.

That all being said, I've decided to take FileMaker Addict in a different direction. While I'll continue to interview people in the community, I'm also planning on broadening the subject matter covered to include things like:

• FileMaker Techniques


• FileMaker Best Practices (documentation, commenting, style, etc)


• FileMaker Events and News


• FileMaker Resources


• Product Reviews (including FileMaker product releases, plugins, and so on)


• General database-related information

My commitment to FileMaker Addict is stronger than ever. I'm lucky enough to have an opportunity to use FileMaker every day, so my "addiction" to it just continues to grow. My goal is to help spread the word about FileMaker so that those who aren't using it give it a chance, and to help those who are using FileMaker to continue to be passionate about it, to use it in more productive ways, etc.

So stay tuned... the new FileMaker Addict is on the way!

-- Tim

FileMaker Addict's Online Store

Something new to announce: We've launched our own FileMaker books and software store!

The store is powered by Amazon's very cool Associates Program. If you're not a member, check it out.

FileMaker Addict Online Store