Thomas Edison said "Genius is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration." (Edison was a renowned workaholic... in competition most of his career with another type of genius, Nikola Tesla...)

Is this accurate in modern IT? If so, what motivates you to put forth that 90%?

Is it money? fame? the rush that accompanies watching your efforts execute in Production?

I've created this thread for responses to a corresponding blog post.

:{> Andy

Edison was actually more emphatic than this:

"Genius is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration. Accordingly, a  'genius' is often merely a talented person who has done all of his or her homework."

I ask myself every day why I do it.  It's the cash.  If I had it, I'd play electric guitar all of the time!

Creating useful stuff, programs and databases that actually help people do their job, not just pretty stuff. 

Diane

I'd have to agree with that. Nothing better than a user saying how easy xyz job is now they have application abc.

My father always said:

E=MCC

Enthusiasm to work = Motivation X Cash X Compliments

Motivation is if you find the work challenging and interesting.

Cash can be subsituted for Reward of some description for the work.

Compliments is recognition for the work.

I do a lot of query optimisation at the moment.

I love the feeling that accompanies getting a 5 minute query run in 5 seconds
The odd occation when a user says something like 'Wow, this is running so fast now'

What I hate is developers who don't care. "Yes, I know it's going to run for 10 minutes, do a couple million reads and send the CPU to 100% for the duration, but it's ok cause it only runs once a day"

We walk in the dark places no others will enter
We stand on the bridge and none may pass

My two cents! I was never impressed with Edison, Tesla was much more interesting. I would venture to say Tesla was probably the real genius, Edison made useful the ideas. Much like today, UNIX and Apple the genius, Microsoft makes the ideas useful. Not that one is more important than the other.

Money is of course important, but I am happiest when I get in the zone, the ideas are flying so fast that I can't try them quickly enough, even with a quantum computer. And am motivated by the possibility of getting in the zone. But the greatest motivation is when a lovely lady tells you how wonderful you are, wife, girlfriend or colleague. Thanks ladies.