What evidence exists that building a product that you would use leads to a greater chance of success? I can think of plenty of counterexamples of entrepreneurs that have built successful products for an audience other than themselves.
I doubt you are going to fine the statistical evidence. Though that would be an awesome find.
The main reason I want to be the user of the product I make: it's 100 times easier to get out of bed in the morning to work on the thing you want to use that day. If you are working on something for someone else, and the "I'm an entrepreneur" honeymoon wears off and you are struggling to get your first revenue, it's HARD to work on that thing you think other people need. Even if you've got some evidence that other people need it.
Doing customer development is so much harder in practice than theory :) When you get to be your own customer, you get to save tons and tons of times waiting for folks to return your emails and calls.
A 'greater chance of success' is too loose a variable to really correlate with something like intuition. Success and its magnitude are highly variate. The best you can do is, as PG says, don't make the stupid mistakes.
Speaking of examples, a lot of products have come from building things for oneself (BaseCamp for instance.) Building a product you use may not be much of a help if you're making any fundamental mistake. However, it makes the life of the developer a hell lot easier.
When you are designing a service you use, intuition comes to your aid. Some things just feel right and some things just wrong. It is not something I can really put into words. Intuition, like determination, may not be something you could measure or plot on bar graphs but boy, it does matter.
Think of a creative side project that you would really enjoy doing. Then do it. And take your time on it. Slow down. Tune out from what everyone else is doing. You have to give yourself time and space to breathe. Don't put pressure on yourself, make it fun!
Don't worry about reading SICP or becoming an expert at some technology. That will come automatically over time. Just choose one stack for your side project and go with it.
It doesn't matter if you code your project in C, clojure, or ruby. What matters is that you produce something that you feel good about. If you make a goal to produce something good, you will learn the technologies and you will become a good hacker over time.
I write all this because I was in the same position as you a couple years ago, so I scrapped my ambition of reading theoretical CS books and learning all the latest hot new technologies (I will do all that stuff later). I decided I'd make a game, and learn what I need to add the features that I imagined. And I progressed. It was so much more fun that way.
I have several ideas for side projects, at first I am really motivated and very excited but very soon the motivation wears down and by then it stops being fun, I lack the will power of sticking through to the end because in the end I constantly fear that I will fail and if I am going to fail anyway, why try it?
This is ruining me I know I can't be like this but I don't know what to do to stop having these thoughts.
I've done that a million times. The trick is to have the right goal. Usually you'll have visions of how it will turn out in the end and not even half way through you give up because it seems that vision won't come true. Think of these projects in terms of years, not months. Then break them down into the very smallest possible parts. Im talking about thinks like making an entire day's goal to just write a single function that does something really small like connect to a database or something. That's how I've managed to finish despite having the same issue.
I fast for 24 hours (i.e. no food, only water and a couple cups of black coffee) twice a week. Contrary to popular belief this does not activate "starvation mode", it burns fat and keeps the weekly calorie intake low.
It's not particularly easy but it's not particularly hard, either. When I started doing 24 hour fasts, I would get shaky, tired, and as you mention, suffer headaches. For the first few times, you will likely not feel great. In my case, I adapted pretty quickly, and I don't feel "off" at all while fasting any more.
I'd also recommend the schedule that I use, which is to eat a normal dinner, and then skip the following breakfast and lunch, and then eat dinner at your usual time. You get 24 hours of no food, but it doesn't feel like a whole day. You also get a beneficial side effect: if you have no food intake in the morning, you don't get nearly as hungry later in the day. It's much harder to eat breakfast and then skip lunch and dinner than to eat dinner and skip the next two meals. Drinking a lot of water throughout the day will also help alleviate the "empty" feeling.
I'm not a doctor, this is not medical advice, consult your healthcare provider before undertaking any diet or exercise routine, blah blah.
I do this as well after being hypoglycemic and requiring food every 2 hours. I used the Lean Gains method which is also called Intermittent Fasting (IF). http://www.leangains.com/ Don't let the dude in the picture put you off. Really cool dude. I also experience better mental clarity and focus when I IF.
I read this a bit differently than saying that anyone can do what Steve Jobs did.
To speak plainly, to be patient and put the dots together, to lead without charisma are all incredibly difficult things to do. It really does take genius and only the extraordinary amongst us can do it.
If you have a natural, god-given charisma, its very easy to be a leader. No accomplishment there. But you would lead for what purpose?
If you have some uncanny ability to predict the future as a whole, without error, you would be popular for your predictions but you wouldn't build much of anything, because building great things requires trial and error.
If you were merely a design expert, you'd make nice looking things, but you wouldn't be able to scale it, compared to the non-designer that sees the greatness in other designers.
Being foolish and curious really trumps all other skills, but how many people can truly endure being foolish and curious?
Algorithmic thinking may be a useful skill but in my experience, there are down sides. Many (not all) programmers are rigid in their thinking; yes they can solve problems logically but sometimes this obstructs other ways of thinking.
Ever since I learned programming, I've found that the more I write code, the harder it is to get in the flow of other tasks that require a loose, less rigid mind set (sports, dancing, writing, music, business). So now I deliberately do things to balance these mind sets.
I have come to the conclusion that following or pursuing goals and dreams is not the key to happiness. Yes, it is something worth doing, but it is not a magic pill.
Running a business, or working on a creative project can also cause a lot of unhappiness and misery. I've been pursuing my goals and dreams for a couple of years now and I don't think it has made me happier at all.
I've found these things to be much more important:
-Maintaining a calm, relaxed state as much as possible. Not suppressing anger but not letting it destroy you either.
-Physical and mental challenges; doesn't mean you have to quit your job and pursue some grand scheme though
While I like 'socializing', I'd qualify it more as a distraction - the 'reading Hacker News' type of distraction - that takes your mind off the problems. It usually doesn't solve much, but makes you happier for a while.
It makes you happy for a while, but also overall. When I think back, the happiest moments have been those spent with good friends, not those hacking away all night.
I don't want to make the sort of assumptions about your life required to suggest this observation necessarily applies to you personally, but:
if 'socializing' is perceived as simply a 'distraction' from a litany of minor complaints about paid employment, its quite possible the root cause of unhappiness lies not in the job but in a lack of compensatory enjoyment of social and leisure situations outside the workplace.
You have not yet found the right people with whom to socialize, I think.
(It's also possible you are just very different from me and from most people I know; but I used to feel similarly; and I still don't like to socialize a lot, but with the right people, every now and then? it can be pretty great.)
Brene Brown is a researcher who believes that true happiness can only be found in establishing meaningful, deep connections that leave you vulnerable. She has a popular ted talk here:
I think I didn't expressed exactly what I meant, so to respond to all comments under the parent post:
I do love spending time with people. I'd say, I like to do it too much sometimes. However, I also found it to be a super-effective way of escaping from harder problems, not only my-job-sucks related, but general my-life-sucks related. What I meant to say in previous comment is that (for me) it has similar 'signature' as escaping problems by reading / discussing on HN. It's not a waste of time, but I know for myself that I could spend here much more time that I should. Ditto for socializing. Sometimes you actually want to solve your problems instead of complaining about them to other people.
I feel the same way but I also think we're a minority. For me, I want to connect in meaningful ways with people. I dislike bar buddies, or casual hangouts with people I know casually. I also feel if you lack any sense of purpose, or a mate, and you keep socializing casually with other guys, it makes me feel worse.
What helps with point #1, let go of the things that are out of your control. No, let them go, completely. Don't let them infect your thoughts at all. If you limit yourself to worrying about things that are under your immediate control it's a lot easier to maintain that calmness. Most of what anger is, is the realization that we don't have control over something that we wish we did.
I'm curious how efficient most coders are even in an 8 hour work day. I find that I can only log about 4 - 5 hours a day (on average) of solid coding time (or marketing/business work). This is because I limit myself to an 8 hour work day, but of course there are breaks and inevitable down time.
Our startup team of 10 has kept pretty strict time logs for the past 3 years. We have an official policy of 40 hour work weeks, but yeah, no developers are able to have that much productive time. Usually we see about 25-30 hours of solid development time, 5 hours of meeting/admin time, and 5 hours of lunches/coffee/break time.
I'd like to hear more about the choice to keep strict time logs in a startup environment. Especially strict ones that provide enough granularity to see 5 hours of break time/wk.
If you can honestly spend 75% of your office time doing actual development, and divide the rest evenly between breaks and meetings, I'd like to see how.
I've recently got into pomodoro timing. I set the timer for 45 minutes, focus totally on work, then take a fifteenish-minute break. I can't do it all day though.
I know the classic pomodoro technique is supposed to be 25 minutes on, 5 minutes off, but a five minute break is too short for me (I like to get out of the building) and the rhythm of the half-hours just goes by too quickly. 45 minute serious-work periods work much better for me.
I was just thankfully let go from a startup that expected extra hours on top of running an open-plan office and coworkers who lived by the "who can interrupt the loudest?!" method of project management. 4-5 hour stretches were never once achieved during normal business hours in the 2.5 months I was there. A 2 hour stretch was a gift, but more often than not the quietude would be broken by one of a small group (3-4) loudest coworkers.
Open floor plans are evil for developers. Whoever started that trend needs to be strung up by their nose hair. There is no better way to ensure no work gets done than putting 10 people in an environment that every two person conversation interrupts (and I believe that "15 minutes to get back into the zone" is a bunch of crap).
I think 37Signals is completely accurate with their assessment of working time. It mirrors your take of a maximum of 4-5 hour blocks that can effectively considered "productive work".
Most of these life lessons have nothing to do with travelling. Most people I know (especially in their late 20's) would come up with a similar list even if they've barely travelled.
I think this is just merely the blog poster's world view articulated into 29 points, and incidentally he has travelled the world instead of living in one place.
However it is amazing what an impact does living at a place away from were one grew up in have in the perception of the world.
I had already traveled a lot ( as a tourist ) before I left Greece to come and live in Japan, when I started to make a life here, I practically had to rediscover myself. It is not so much the big things, it's the small ones : habits that I took for granted, jokes that do not sound funny, if you can ask someone's phone number... Like a very thin safety net of supporting culture I never new was there just disappeared underneath me.
I also had a fresh view of Greece , and my life before
I think traveling gives you a change of perspective difficult to grasp at home
Thanks for sharing.
I just (a month ago) did a relocation and while I'm not as far away from my former home as you (we are talking about 3.000km here) I certainly notice the first free-fall encounters.
I'm glad to read that you recommend it. I hope one day I'll give out the same advice, from another perspective.
I guess it is not a coincidence, but just in case that you don't know it already, patio11 is giving a talk at a presentation group we have here called "Design Matters", at the Osaka Shinsaibashi Apple Store. It will be great.
Check out http://designmatters.jp/
This group was initiated by Garr Raynolds of http://www.presentationzen.com/ but Garr became very busy, so since last year, together with another guy we run the show.
Sorry to barge in but I'd love to go to this; the website just mentions something for April 5th though; can I assume that patio11's talk is on from 7pm at the Apple Store in Shinsaibashi this Friday?
I'd also be interested in grabbing a coffee some time with others from HN; my e-mail is in my profile, please drop me a line :)
No not THIS Friday, it is scheduled for, Jul 29th Fri
at 7pm at the 2F of Shinsaibashi apple store.
I am very sorry, the site is not updated yet (because I didn't have time to get to it yet :( Sorry, things are getting a little crazy with day job recently... )
Depends how your travels looks like, you can travel living in luxury hotels, spend most of the time with people from your country either by the hotel swimming pool or guided tours or in the museums - or you can be less savy and go a bit "guerilla" with your travels: go a bit off from the typical tourists' paths, see the real local culture (not the one from museums) and real local people - this should be enough to "open up your mind" for different cultures (of course living abroad adds more of that but you can get some essence even if you stay somewhere for only a couple of days.
My current work as a system engineer implementing ERP systems for overseas affiliates, takes me often to work abroad (from Japan, that is) for a few weeks a time. Although I don't have time to do almost any sight-seeing at all, and although they will usually have me stay in more or less high grade hotels (that narrow one's vision, because they are the same, everywhere), it is working together with the local operators and managers, eating together, understanding their work ethic and habits, getting their feedback, pushing it together through the transition period, so when I go back I feel I understand a little bit more about the country from these interactions than from whatever I saw during my limited time off work.
It has to do with the change of perspective. When traveling you usually curry your original perspective with you so it is kind of difficult to see things from another angle while bound for back home.
I guess it depends on how you travel though (the OP sounds like a very serious traveler).
I do agree that majority of these lessons have also been mentioned by other blogs.
However, to know them and to learn them are two different things. Since human, especially me, has a tendency of falling back into old habits (such as hoarding possessions), posts such as this now-and-again to serve as reminders should always be welcome.
On an another note, I have a feeling that the term "life lesson" is being thrown about way too much. Can you say you have learned a life lesson without living through most of your life (ie. < ~50)?
> Most of these life lessons have nothing to do with travelling.
Very true. But I think they have everything to do with questioning your assumptions, breaking your routine, and experiencing something unfamiliar. One can do all of these things without leaving home. But showing up to a foreign country where you don't speak the language or know anybody seems like a particularly effective way to do all of this.
A lot of it is common sense, but I rarely meet people truly living that way. So, the take-away from the article is that it's really possible to have it all at once.
While the lessons aren't travel-related themselves, he probably has learned most of them while travelling. It would be my guess that if he had been sitting in an office and pushing for a career for those eight years then it's likely his world view just might be a bit more naive.
There's also a difference between vacationing and living abroad. You don't need to spend a lot of time abroad to gain that knowledge and perspective, but you're not going to learn it in one- and two-week vacations entirely surrounded by middle-class comfort.
As for OP, I think he learned a lot more than what he articulated. He's obviously intelligent, thoughtful, and experienced. But the 29 points he gave are all observations that, while valuable, are hardly original. This isn't surprising; usually the things people say they learned aren't what they actually learned because the latter are too subtle and difficult to articulate.
It also makes it seem like there's not that much to learn by spending large amounts of time travelling. That's because people on average are similar, so it's equally probable you will meet the people who will make a difference in your life, travelling or no-travelling. Maybe in the end you will be wiser using the internet, which can actually help you find people with common aspirations/interests etc.
That's a bit harsh. It was a popular page that centered around the brand of a popular company and caused their fans to perceive them in a certain light. It is natural to want to know if the removal was deliberate or not.
There seems to be a big trend to try to expose 37signals as actually some sort of evil company or to diminish their image. Which makes sense due to their popularity and claims of excellence (which I think are, in this case, valid).
This article makes a good point. The problem is not that startups are derivative or solving trivial problems. The problem is that the whole startup process has been manufactured and scaled to the point that it has lost its intrigue and stifled its innovation.
Apple, Google, and Microsoft were outsiders when they were startups. Current SV incubator teams are more like elite in-crowd communities, safe and insular.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Nobody thought that Apple, Google or Microsoft would be game-changers when they were in the startup stage. When Apple and Microsoft were in the startup stage, their customers were hobbyists. When Google was in its startup stage, it was clear to everybody that they would never be anything more than a modest compliment to what Yahoo offered.
If every startups were to listen to this author, nothing would ever get done. We'd spend our lives trying to "change the world" without making the millions of incremental improvements that are necessary for the world-changing stuff to happen.
My point isn't to agree with the author that every company should try to be a game-changer. In fact, too many SV companies already think that they are game-changers before they've even launched anything. That's part of the problem.
My point is that when you have the startup process manufactured and replicated into a kind of meta-startup (like YC), at a certain point the goals of the founders become more about conforming to the community and impressing each other rather than creating a genuine product.
Obviously not all YC startups are like this, but any time something grows and scales, there is a danger of it losing its original purpose.
My goodness. You know what this means? This is essentially Peter Thiel's argument against college applied to startup incubators. Think about it- these incubators are giving startup folks aid and guidance that past generations of never had. This is essentially creating a new elite who instead of going to Harvard and getting a leg up, are going to YC and getting a leg up. In neither case are the kids scrapping together in a garage, driven only by their own vision and living hardscrabble until they can score their first angel investor.
Interesting thought, but there's a difference between an "elite" (who may or may not have earned what they have) and a meritocracy (who worked for what they have). Most people (except maybe the talentless children of billionaires) would probably agree that meritocracies are better.
I'm not saying that acolytes of YC do not deserve to be there. I'm just building on to the previous commenter's points about the creation of new Silicon Valley in-crowd communities. Now, I think this whole point is debatable- certainly incubated or otherwise guided (like YC alumni) startups are a minority of startups. And unoriginal, make-a-quick-buck startups can come from anywhere. I just think that maybe there is a point to be made that the road of startups is getting more and more structured and unofficially regimented, whether it is through an incubator, or just by a culture that promotes certain patterns to success. And with the guidance of groups such as YC or incubators, it's made more and more easy. But then perhaps that is about as valid a point as complaining that Stack Overflow (not to mention Google!) makes it quicker to solve programming problems these days, or that memory managed languages make developers lazy, or that not walking to school in 8-foot snow distorts the soul, and so on.
