What I have been up to lately, and some observations
Greetings my fellow man,
In my last post, I mentioned being enthusiastic about improving execution. There’s good progress. I am happy about that.
I have been doing programming and e-commerce. I made my first few thousand euros this Christmas, which feels fantastic. Now I am working on a fun little time management software (let me know in Discord if you’re interested to try it at some point).
This “paradigm shift” from declarative learning to bias towards action is refreshing. I still IR and do SRS, but heavily prioritize steps that take me towards tangible results instead of just constructing my mental world.
Here are some observations along the journey:
Conceptual lenses matter
(a lens through which you interpret the world.)
If a ‘mental model’ of e.g. marketing is defined as a framework that helps explain business, a ‘conceptual lens’ would be a part of that framework which helps you to focus on certain variables.
E.g. when you look at marketing and innovation through a Jobs-to-be-Done lens
, everything looks different:
The unit of analysis is no longer the customer or the product, it’s the core functional “job” the customer is trying to get done
Markets aren’t defined around products, they are defined as groups of people trying to get a job done.
Customers aren’t buyers, they are job executors.
By discovering concepts that help you distinguish important variables in the world, you might produce superior results.
“Hunger”, testosterone, and traditionally masculine traits are good fuel for action
Taking 100% accountability, embracing masculinity, and being more of a “go-getter” gives me good energy to take action.
Here’s a good quote I heard:
“Your body is designed to work best while you are hungry. If you’re full of food, you are going to be lazy and lethargic. You should always be a little bit hungry.”
This is just another paradigm and mental construct. I used to be timid, overly analytical, and reserved person:
Thinking is good, but each thought adds to the complexity. You don’t always have to know why something happens, it just matters that it happens. (avoid useless complexifiers that inhibit action!)
Working out, getting good experiences, building self-confidence, and embracing masculinity have given me good life energy, which helps me take action toward personal projects.
Getting good at schleps:
Schlep means tedious, unpleasant task
No one likes schleps, but hackers especially dislike them. Most hackers who start startups wish they could do it by just writing some clever software, putting it on a server somewhere, and watching the money roll in—without ever having to talk to users, or negotiate with other companies, or deal with other people’s broken code. Maybe that’s possible, but I haven’t seen it.
…schleps are not merely inevitable, but pretty much what business consists of. A company is defined by the schleps it will undertake.
- Paul graham
Read more: http://www.paulgraham.com/schlep.html
This is interesting because I was conditioned by the pleasure of learning for a long time. However, in the business realm, people pay for tasks they don’t want to do by themselves (typically characterized as schleps).
An airport is defined by its fixed costs. Planes, landing area, control towers… Schleps can be seen as a such fixed cost. The more you are willing to undertake, the less there are people who are willing to do the same.
I am happy with where I am heading. Working on projects, and trying to improve my execution skills feels like a journey much like when I started learning seriously with SuperMemo a few years ago.
Merry Christmas pal,
Niko