Which Filter?

Few years back I was discussing with a friend about shopping. She told me that when she had to purchase a gift for someone, say a watch, she would go to the shop and look around for appropriate watches until she found a few that matched her criteria and then she would look at the price. If the price was within budget she would purchase the watch, else she would start all over again.

I was aghast. If I wanted to purchase a watch for someone, I would set the primary filter as the price and then select from the watches that met my primary, that is price, criterion. 

Essentially we apply that criterion first that is most important to us. This primary criterion seems to vary from person to person.

Today I happened to go along with a friend who wanted some editing done on some videos that he had. He wanted to do some trimming, merging, adding subtitles, changing aspect ratio and the like. Both of us went to a person he knew who works as a video editor. 

We soon found out that the guy was using a software, the annual license cost of which was quite high. I started getting fidgety. I thought there was no point getting to know how to use this software if we weren't going to buy it. I asked my friend whether he wanted to get the editing done primarily or whether he wanted to use this occasion to learn how to do editing. He avoided answering my question.

Coming back, I related today's conversation with the one I had years earlier about the purchase of a watch.

The similarity struck me. In both cases I would have applied the price filter first. But neither of my friends did that.

So I wondered. My first friend wanted to get the right watch. Today, my other friend wanted to watch how the editing was done. 

For some people, the passion is about the job. For others it is about completing the job. 

Maybe I need to rephrase that. When we are passionate about something, we do not worry about its completion. We just want to be immersed in it and get it to perfection. 

In other cases, we take it as a job and just get it done. In these cases, perfection is not a goal. Good enough and fast is.

Having said that, I wonder how people like Steve Jobs married both the concepts. 

When I get irritated with people who don't use MY primary filter, I might have to consider how they feel about my using what is not THEIR primary filter.