“ Lack of product orientation:
Some people seem more concerned about the process than the result of activity.
Some people seem more concerned about the process than the result of activity.
The Insomniac's Tumbleog
A Constant stream of gibberish updated while you were sleeping and I was not
Awesome Flow Chart
I was reading Seth Godin’s article and answering the questions in my head so I thought I should put them down somewhere and make it public to hold myself accountable
Who are you trying to please?
>Myself, primarily.
Are you trying to make a living, make a difference, or leave a legacy?
> Make a difference, I can already make a living and I’m not interested in leaving legacies
How will the world be different when you’ve succeeded?
> It will be easier, people will wonder how they got along before I invented X Is it more important to add new customers or to increase your interactions with existing ones?
> Add new ones
Do you want a team? How big? (I know, that’s two questions)
> 10 or maybe 15 people, a tight knit similar minded bunch with everyone working towards a vision instead of for a paycheck
Would you rather have an open-ended project that’s never done, or one where you hit natural end points? (How high is high enough?)
> Natural high points so I can move on the next
Are you prepared to actively sell your stuff, or are you expecting that buyers will walk in the door and ask for it?
> I want people to rave about it and tell all their friends so that people come looking for us.
Which: to invent a category or to be just like Bob/Sue, but better?
> Invent a Category
If you take someone else’s investment, are you prepared to sell out to pay it back?
> NO Are you done personally growing, or is this project going to force you to change and develop yourself?
> Im done growing, this is all about what im building no longer about me
Choose: teach and lead and challenge your customers, or do what they ask…
> Challenge them, to rethink how and why they do things.
How long can you wait before it feels as though you’re succeeding?
> A few years at the most, if it takes longer than that I need to question my path
Is perfect important? (Do you feel the need to fail privately, not in public?)
> No perfect is secondary, potential counts more
Do you want your customers to know each other (a tribe) or is it better they be anonymous and separate?
> Anonymous
How close to failure, wipe out and humiliation are you willing to fly? (And while we’re on the topic, how open to criticism are you willing to be?)
> Not very close, I dont want to be distracted from what Im building to focus on financial matters
What does busy look like?
> Having something better to do than what other people are offering me to do
Burnout
“Within the first year or two of working as a professional designer, you will question if you want to do this any more. You will get beat up and overworked, you will produce a giant pile of work that you are not proud of. You will be lucky if you get out of the first year with a feeling of pride in or ownership of anything you make. You will look back after the first year and not remember most of what kept you busy. You will make work that you question the use of, and you will do things that make you feel like a cog in some sort of awful, wasteful machine. There will be times that you will be just merely a tool for someone else. You will question what all this work is for and you will need to re-convince yourself at some point as to whether or not you love this practice.”
“ The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.
— Henry David Thoreau
“ It is human nature to believe the limits of our perception to be the entirety of reality.
“ I’d never say education is useless, but I stick firmly to the idea that how you get it doesn’t matter.
“ I don’t buy things that are “getting better”, because they usually don’t. Whatever caused them to be lacking in their current release will usually prevent them from being great in future releases.
“ Effectiveness is doing the right things.” What’s true for individual managers is also true for organizations, which often squander time and resources trying to improve processes for products not worth producing. The solution? See “abandonment,
“
If you think you haven’t found your passion yet, you’re probably expecting it to be overwhelming.
Instead, just notice what excites you and what scares you on a small moment-to-moment level.
“ the standard pace is for chumps” - that the system is designed so anyone can keep up. If you’re more driven than “just anyone” - you can do so much more than anyone expects.
“ Every artist was first an amateur.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
“ my passion lies in the shorter term projects where I can have a meaningful impact in specific ways (compared to building a company out over years).
