At first blush, the takeaway seems obvious –
after all, the movie reiterates the line which purports to underscore its
message several times – “Don’t run after success, run after excellence and
success will run after you”. This pithy message is made even more poignant with
the final image, of the ‘3 idiots’ (the protagonists) running, and so-called ‘success’
in the form of a character illustrating the corollary viewpoint running after
them.
When I thought about it a bit deeper, what occurred
to me were the following points:
1.
The central character, ‘Rancho’
illustrated not only the pursuit of excellence, but even more importantly, the
kind of person one should presumably aspire to be – generous, kind, helpful, unswayed
by excessive praise or criticism. This is illustrated over several anecdotes,
but the feeling generated by him is generally that most people sooner or later
love and admire him. Becoming this sort of person could then be seen as a goal
in itself.
2. Excellence stems from sustained
hard work, and hard work, even if it doesn’t give you an immediate reward, can
only be sustained over the long period required by loving what you do. This
returns to the passion hypothesis, derisively disputed by Cal Newport, but includes his premise that only by being “so good they can't ignore
you” can you succeed. The movie then is implicitly arguing that the hard work
needed to acquire mastery can only happen when you start by choosing a path you
love already, or are interested enough to pursue. If you secretly harbouring an
infatuation with some other professional calling, then you won't be able to
achieve excellence in the path that you’re following only out of a sense of
duty – like the wildlife photographer trying to be an engineer in the movie. This
point especially appeals to me – as I am afraid to fully commit to the marriage
to writing, keeping a toe in other pursuits, in case I'm not good enough or
lucky enough to succeed in this endeavour.
3. The final point, and to me the
most important one, centers on creating value. Simply focusing on excellence is
a bit pointless if you are excellent at conning people out of their money. It may
make you successful by a narrow definition of sheer net worth; however, if by success
you mean feeling fulfilled and happy in a larger sense, creating value is the
key to success. If you notice, all the inventions Rancho worked on found a
problem or gap and filled it. Although the movie doesn’t explicitly mention
this, I believe that creating the most value possible through one’s work is
really the oft-neglected ingredient in the elusive formula for success; at
least the 3 idiot-brand of success.
