Sebastian Marshall

to the commentors who've said "you're only 25. stop feeling that way": you have forgotten what it's like to be 25 and feel 25. i think your intention is to uplift and inject perspective, but you sound uncaring and distant to me. i recommend against saying this kind of blithe bullshit. people don't like hearing it. you don't like hearing someone say that to you.

i am 25. i teach in the humanities, but i'm not interested in a degree there. i love acting. i used to act. i'm currently:

soldering an IBM model F keyboard to a USB board so i can daily-drive it.

lusting for a lisp machine.

ordering an FPGA so i can write my own lisp machine.

reading psych books on the off-chance that i become a therapist.

inhaling everything Alan Kay that i can find.

leading communication workshops so people can communicate more how they want and less how they don't.

i see connections and a narrative among these projects (uhh sometimes) but i can't explain it to anyone else for shit. i really suck at it. it gets me down because i think people misperceive me as aimless. i'm not aimless.

this blog post spoke to me: http://sebastianmarshall.com/fundamentals-and-novelty-seeking

i'm constantly looking for distractive life-hacks (cheat codes). i should be working on my fundamentals. i subconsiously believe that all my weirdo historical hobbies will come together to make me cool/money/content/dunno. those are weirdo hobbies and self-improvement/help tricks, though. i have one fundamental right…

Read http://www.ribbonfarm.com/, http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/, and anything else you get your hands on about strategy. Seriously, the things that are holding you back are corporate, office and national politics. These aren't insurmountable obstacles, just impressions of them. It's a bank for goodness sake, it's not meant to be interesting.

Suits and a sterile office are not the problem. They are the symptom; and more than that, they are the signal and the filter for the type of people that work there (so I can see you having just as much problem getting your comrades-in-arms to agree to "collaboration, idea generation and non-corporatism" as your managers.)

(I've written this assuming you're not a manager. If you are, great, it'll be easier to do either of these options and you can probably shave a couple of years of the timeline!)

The best advice I can think of (other than give up, obviously) is to first prove technical competence, in the form a high-level executive understands (I saved us X million dollars on Y different occasions) and then get them to support you in setting up a team (which you will lead and will almost certainly need to recruit from outside to fill — quick, who's the first person you phone?) that will do the projects you want to do (quick, what can you do that might add a billion the bank's bottom line?) and provide the political cover to do what you want. It'll take 5-10 years, it's risky and it requires political skill.

An alternative tactic…

After a week, it is definitely time for another conversation. A week with no update is unacceptable, he is disrespecting you. It's rude and unprofessional to leave you hanging with "...eventually, don't bother me..." When someone who is supposed to be your business partner does this, it's a clue that: 1.) they are a joker, 2.) they can't be trusted.

If something was going on in his personal like etc. he should be adult and professional enough to inform the people he goes into business with.

Although, he could be working diligently, you could tell if your project is on git, they should be making regular commits to dev branches if they are working.

My advice, follow up with him on status, get a final answer on whether or not he will finish it, and when. If he is adult and reasonable, you guys are good. If he admits he doesn't want to do the work... Sever ties with them, they can not be trusted, how do you know he will not lose interest in the second product? And put you in the same position again.

I understand What AznHisoka is saying about losing interest, this is very true, but when someone commits to doing something, they need to do it, otherwise they are not worth your time. Fucking Jokers, there is an interesting post on HN about this: http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/if-you-want-to-get-rich-stop-being-a-fucking-joker?1

Seriously, if someone working with/for me and they; first stop working on the agreed priorities, then give me some wishy washy non existent time…

I've got some good recommendations. I'm really into motivational type stuff as well, I'm sort of a personal development freak. Here are my favorites:

http://sebastianmarshall.com/ - Sebastian is my favorite writer. He generally discusses productivity, personal development, strategy (life and business), etc. Highly, highly recommended.

http://artofmanliness.com/ - The Art of Manliness is (as you would suspect), a site for men. It discusses things like: how to find your life's purpose, how to become a better man--generally stuff that isn't really discussed between men, but that men should know. They write long, well written articles that cover a lot of subjects.

http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/ - Steve Pavlina is a controversial dude. He writes about personal development, but also tends to throw in vegan / spirituality type stuff every now and then (which I disagree with). Overall, his writing is very great. He does long-form pieces that fully discuss an argument, and it's worth reading along.

On a lighter note, I also try to write in a 'motivational' type style on my personal site, just in the off chance you're interested: http://rdegges.com/

There are tons of other blogs out there (The Art of Ass Kicking, etc.), but I generally find the other options to be too 'commercialized' for my liking, and they're filled with those really short, hyped up kinda articles.

I think when a lot of people hear the phrase life tracking they associate it with conclusions like drinking an extra half an ounce of water each meal reduced my caloric intake by 6.6% and I think that can be a bit overwhelming and it discourages people from trying it out (sounds like a lot of work!).

Stats and analysis are far less important for me than the act of tracking. Knowing that I'm accountable for my decisions makes me much more likely to make positive choices. For example, I've been trying to cut back on coffee. Knowing that I drink 1.2 or 0.8 coffees per day has far less of an impact on me than knowing that at the end of the day I'm going to have to go in and check "Yes" next to my coffee item. It sounds ridiculous, but it works.

Sebastian Marshall has written extensively about life tracking, which is how I originally got into it. His What Gets Measured Gets Managed post is an excellent primer:

http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/what-gets-measured-gets-managed

So, is this one of the crappy ones or one of the good ones ;) ?

Agreed whole heartedly though, if you are a 'producer' there will be tons of stuff that is not fantastic but that might be useful to somebody.

The funny thing is that it is unpredictable, what will be appreciated and what not. Sometimes I fire off a 10 minute blog post and it gets retweeted for days or even weeks after, and sometimes I work for hours and hours on something and nobody cares.

I see the 'lower grade stuff' as taking a break from the other stuff whilst still keeping busy. Sooner or later you find yourself engaged with more interesting things again, if you 'broke the routine' just because you're not doing anything worthwhile you'd find your source of inspiration dried up pretty quickly.

So keep busy, by all means, and fail often, looking forward to the gems. Like this one: http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/?p=95