Keep the Lord's Day Holy

An important aspect of the Filipino Technopreneurial Revolution is the issue of sustaining the revolution at the level of the technopreneur. If starting an enterprise isn't hard enough, the requirement for the technopreneurial revolution is for Filipino enterprises to be able to innovate faster and better than competitors abroad is much more difficult. At that time, I was working 20 hours per day 7 days a week and we are far from catching up on any competitor. The only way I could possibly work harder is to forgo sleeping and eating but I don't think it will be helpful in the long run. A homily by a priest at the Edsa Shrine provided the answer.

"Keep the Lord's Day holy."

--Ten Commandments

He said that God doesn't need us to keep His Day holy. He is God after all. He requires us to "labour for six days and do all our work but rest on the seventh day." not because he needs us to praise Him but because we need to rest. Reflect. Meditate. Pray. Spend time with the family. Enjoy. As long as we don't work. We might not realize it but we need to spend time to recharge and be ready for the week ahead. God, in His great wisdom, requires this of us.

Reflecting on this, I realize that we can't outwork big competitors. A team of five engineer/programmers can't outwork a team of 500 engineers/programmers no matter what they do. They have to be creative in their approach. And sometimes, you get too involve in the details of the project to be able to think creatively. You need to stop, step back and re-assess the situation, re-assess your methodologies. Keeping the Lord's Day holy is not just an opportunity to rest and recharge, it is a chance to think creatively. Without which, we would fight a losing battle to out-working the competitor instead of out-thinking him.