Taylor Pearson

I want to start by saying that I saw this comment this morning, and have been thinking about it all day. Thank you for commenting this, and sticking around to defend your point.

I do have a couple of comments.

First, a system like you are describing is going to be highly efficient. However, this is not always a good thing. As you increase efficiency, in almost any system you will decrease robustness [0]. While this may be fine in a startup or some software project, for a society, this seems extremely dangerous.

Second, I disagree with the concept of everyone having their own reality. Everyone has their own perception of reality, and may or may not be able to perceive/conceive the reality of someone else's perception, but there is still only one authoritative, physical truth (Well, at least on a scale macro enough for this conversation).

Third, even if you control all of the media (via government for example), you still will not be able to control everyone's perception of reality. See for example China or North Korea, which I believe are the two systems closest to control of the media in the manner you are describing. In China. Despite their total control of the media, there are still citizens who think differently and have a different perception of reality. The only reason that these citizens follow along with the common goal, is because of the threat of force against them or their families if they don't.

For the fourth, I'm going to borrow your war example. If half the…

in my country (Italy) there is no importance (or almost)
to quality of projects (especially Technically), you
have to face with ridiculous deadlines, poor team
mate (in order of thech knowledge) and tremendous
customers.

Quality versus deadlines, jousting with shitty team members, or suffering the burden of demanding and insipid customers. All of this is normal. These are human factors, and they exist within a spectrum (or gradient). Some areas can be worse than others, but none are ever quite good.

Moving into a different field (one which is more specialized than generalized-enterprise-business development-in-yet-another-problem-domain) won't fix any of those things.

i constantly feel interested in IT Security, then
low level programming (C/C++) than again "new"
languages like GOLang, RUST etc.. i can't focus on
nothing, i think it's due to my work frustrations

Having tangential interests (security, low-level computing, new languages) is also normal, and a symptom of possessing a naturally curious creativity.

So, the question: Is an inability to deliver on hobbies, and convert them into productive professional skills, driven by miserable distractions? Nah. Whether you make something of them, isn't going to be the cure of the things that you find frustrating, BUT the time you spend tending to frustrating tasks will be time that is poorly spent, under any circumstances. Fluffy bean-counting busy work will eat up the precious moments of your life,…

Hey HN.

Before you go ‘not another to-do list’; I wrote this for myself much earlier in the year, after using the “only set yourself 5 things to do every day” hack on paper for a few weeks, and it works quite well.

I put it on its own domain shortly after so I could access it when out and about. I had some vague plan to ‘market’ it at some point, but other stuff took priority.

Early this week I was talking to a friend about this article: https://taylorpearson.me/fast/ - basically, at 70% you should just launch something. It coincided with a great book I’ve been reading (‘How to Be an Imperfectionist’). This project seemed to be a (/another) prime example of something I start, that gets to 70% and remains un-launched. So he said “Why don’t you just launch it?”

The ‘perfectionist’ in me hates the idea of sending something out now - I’m actually kind of nervous doing it. But I know if I don’t, I probably never will. I’m sure you’ll be able to find some bugs and issues, but I’ve been able to use it personally relatively successfully. The homepage / landing page hasn’t been designed to encourage signup (which would have been on the roadmap), and the whole site was a result of ‘build and see’, rather than any kind of logical planning. The design needs a bunch of ‘prettying’, but… well, 70%. And if you find it useful, then great :-)

The mailing list comment in the join box refers to the fact that I may, at some-point, send a ‘checkout my site I actually got to 100% on’, but…

There's a couple of things I do that I've found beneficial to deal with this problem.

1. I've found it very beneficial to "Lock down" goals and objectives for the entire year.

Spend 2 days thinking of what you want, with a 4 day review period and match
them with a list of habits. Then put them somewhere you'll see every day.

For instance, I put them on the right hand side of my main Trello Board.
Every day, I see there's seven of them and that perhaps playing with this shiny object won't "move me" towards their realization.

2. The purgatory list

To deal with the shiny object problem, I've come up with a system for reviewing my urges of curiosity.
A "purgatory" Trello board for instance, which I review at the end of the week.
"Should I do it?"
"Will it move me forward?"
The answer is typically obvious.
During the week I'm focused on the things at hand, and when I'm done with my week I choose what to do next.
Separating the thinking from the doing is always beneficial.

3. Systems.

Read "The War of Art"[1], or "Daily Rituals"[2], or listen to any kind of podcast by productive people.
They all say the same thing, losers have inspiration, productive people have systems.
Taylor Pearson has the "Weekly Entrepreneur Review".[3]
I've implemented it. Tweaked it.
It's great.

4. Information diet.

It's good to limit your consumption of information to X amount per day or to specific periods of the day.
If you're like me, you love to learn and you want to do it all the…

Get yourself into a mastermind group with 2-5 others in a similar situation - solo founders, bootstrappers, etc. You can start with just 1 other person then add more.

Have a regular 1 hour video call every week or two. Everyone gives updates, support, and keeps each other accountable on goals.

Keep a Slack/Skype channel open in between to say hi, help each other, share wins, etc. Bonus points for meeting locally, but online is fine.

Why? Masterminds are the biggest thing I did going from wantreprenur to actually shipping & earning from products. They're also one of the best things you can do to beat entrepreneurial loneliness. Every week you meet other people who share your struggles and are invested in your success.

Here's a good resource for running one: https://taylorpearson.me/mastermind/

If you find at least 1 other person willing to do this (a few candidates on this thread already, or make a FB / LinkedIn post) I'll happily join the first one to facilitate & show how. Email in profile.

P.S. A coworking space + online communities like founder cafe, product people, complice, wip.chat (h/t other posters) can also be super helpful.

I suggest taking a look at the dragon portfolio

https://taylorpearson.me/thedragon/

The basic idea is that you create a balanced portfolio of assets that are negatively correlated with each other so that, over a very long time horizon , your wealth retains its value even in the face of uncertainty, black swan events, and volatility. An example would be owning an equal proportion of stock, cash, bitcoin, gold, fixed income, commodities, and volatility. (Harder for the average person to get exposure to commodities and volatility - but I think bitcoin checks those boxes).

Edit: include original paper that describes the portfolio by Christopher Cole:
https://docsend.com/view/taygkbn