Joel Gascoigne, co-founder of Buffer, writes about startups, bootstrapping, traction, remote work, and personal focus.
HN commenters recommend his posts on ignoring mainstream news, distributed teams at Buffer, and overnight success as thoughtful, practical writing on startups and work.
Here's how I did it. YMMV.
[NOTE: I do have a fairly taxing full-time job and also go to a boxing gym 5 times a week or more after work, and still made the time to be a creator after all that, by forcing myself to adhere the following rules I set for myself. Not bragging, it took me over 10 years to finally get the discipline, just trying to tell you it can be done.]
1) Stop watching the news * , on TV and online. It's hard at first, but can be done.
2) Sign out of all social media apps, and pick just 1 or 2 that you really cherish, so that you are not out cold with nothing to consume. For me, I was able to whittle it down to just hackernews. HN does a great job of filtering out or flagging Political News articles and other click baity / fake stuff. And the quality of articles and stories are very high. I also use the Show HN tab to inspire myself, when I see that everyday, and almost every hour, someone has CREATED and SHIPPED something useful or awesome.
3) Set a small goal of 30 mins per day, or 1 hour per day to work on whatever it is you want to produce. I started with 30 mins a day and worked my way up (6 months later) to now 3 to 4 hours a day and 6 hours on weekends.
I shipped my 1st side-project last week -- soft launched it -- and am about to do a Show HN within the next week to 10 days.
Hope this helps!
[ You'll notice that when you do #2, your real-life interactions with your online friends and fam will dramatically improve in quality. "Catch-up" convos…
TL;DR:
1) You feel better
2) You were never actually accomplishing anything by watching the news
3) Most current-events-related conversations are just people talking out of their asses
4) There are much better ways to “be informed”
5) “Being concerned” makes us feel like we’re doing something when we’re not
My own personal experience: I quit watching the news the day after the 2016 Election ended. I felt so ill the next day I couldn't even get out of Bed. So I googled stuff on "how to stop watching news" and came across this post by Buffer Co-founder Joel Gasgoine => http://joel.is/the-power-of-ignoring-mainstream-news/
It completely opened my eyes. Ever since I quit the news (everything incl. google news, reddit, huffpo 538, etc etc, except HN of course :) I've been feeling the following +ve effects
1) I am generally more happy and mindful, less stressed
2) I've finally made the most progress on my side-project that was languishing for years.
3) I am more mindful and get more things that are in my control, done. Related graphic => "Circle of Control vs Circle of Concern" http://www.jdroth.com/images/circle-concern-control.jpg
4) I smile more. I think this is because I finally realized that I can neither control, nor contain all the bad things that happen around the world, that we read about in the news.
Don't let the new "wash over you". Take control of the things you need to get done, for you and your family and friends and career and retirement and life, and…
My friend:
"To be who we are, first let's forget who we think we are" - Paulo Coehlo.
Your thoughts and feelings are like your body. Don't feed them well, or bathe them regularly, and your thoughts and feelings will smell as bad as your body if you don't shower for a few days, or weeks.
http://Joel.is has some fantastic articles about the inner development of an entrepreneur. Ultimately what you do will only be as good as you were, internally and externally at any point in your life. Make it your life's work to become better every day and everything else will.
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Don't be so focused on a destination. What no one tells you is the only destination worth pursuing is creating a mindset for any journey you undertake.
After over a decade pursuing entrepreneurship, some scraps of knowledge I've learnt the hard way..
An entrepreneur must remember:
- Building and practice discipline in anything you need to do is the master root skill of every success or thing you'll ever want, or come across. Be disciplined and you'll be better ready to exploit opportunities that come.
- Hard work is not special, it's entry to get a chance to pursue what you want. Hard work isn't in hours, it's in effectiveness in creating value.
- Positivity (negativity gets nothing done)
- Optimism (blind doubt, and blind faith are both bad, but you are in the business of creating value)
- Creating value - make stuff people actually want and want badly enough to pay for regularly
- To always…
I'm hoping to try the co-working vacation this year to see for myself if I'm still as productive in a new city or country without being distracted by wanting to explore this new place I'm in. I think having a space where other freelancers and startups are working would make it easier to get up do some work around like minded people and still enjoy a new place.
It's a different twist on traveling that doesn't bind you to trying to see as much as you can in the 3 weeks you have off a year. You can really get to know a city or country if you stay there for longer. I don't really want a work life balance, I want it more intertwined so that I can do my work while living my life and co-working might just give me a chance to do so. Joel at Buffer was right about not wanting to have a deferred live plan where we work to then enjoy life.(1) I think with today's technology and forward thinking bosses and company's its possible to do great work wherever we are.
I still need to test this out and see if I am actually productive. This fall I spent a week in Vancouver and a week in Fernie and was really productive even in a new environment. I think the co-working spaces around the world will just make it that much easier for me to do longer trips. I'll have the reliable internet and quite space if needed to do good work without worrying about the wifi at coffeeshops and worrying about my gear being stolen if I get up and use the bathroom.
1.…
>Help us spread the word [...] make the first move towards a job interview in a discreet way.
That might be a bit contradictory.
Also, it's not clear from your website – do you contact the people I select in step 1 out of band (by e-mail or something) and ask them if they are interested in interviewing any of their LinkedIn connections? How does this actually work, end-to-end?
If you're relying on my contacts also signing up for jobrupt, then, to a close approximation, that's never going to happen.
In a two-sided market like this, and with the anonymity constraint on top, it's really hard to see how it can succeed. Some ideas:
Focus on a niche you can target to get reasonable usage [1][2] (ideally >50% of users who might be selected, but at least 10% might be good enough).
Provide a concierge-type services to job-seekers – track down the people they select then find out if they are offering jobs (its possible but not clear if this is already what you are doing.)
[1] http://joel.is/post/39659497239/how-to-gain-traction-in-two-sided-markets
[2] http://cdixon.org/2010/08/21/the-bowling-pin-strategy/
Agreed! Tools almost always reflect the flaws of their users — but it’s not to say that the flaws of the tool proper can’t harm a user too. In Slack’s case, I think their notification settings (and the defaults in particular) encourage an always-on culture that can be hard for some corporate cultures to resist.
Regarding public communications — I think that only aggravates the noise/always-on issue, but if that’s your think, you can of course do that on email. See examples from Stripe [0] and Buffer [1]. (Not sure if/how that scales though! Was there a follow-up from these companies?)
[0]: https://stripe.com/blog/email-transparency
[1]: http://joel.is/how-we-handle-team-emails-at-our-startup-defaulting-to/