Iterate as fast as possible

Have an aptitude for serendipity

Get more parts on the table

Stay motivated with recurring small dopamine hits

Incremental correctness

Keep it simple, stupid

Measure output, not outcomes

Non-technical regrets at Spectrum

Solve your own problems

Design a process

 Make it easy to jump in

# Always be shipping

The more things I ship, the more chances serendipity has to strike one of them. ([[Have an aptitude for serendipity]])

If you never release that song you composed, how is a music label meant to discover you? If you never release that novel you wrote, how is a publisher meant to stumble upon you?

This doesn’t just apply to big projects, since I try to [[Iterate as fast as possible]] any small change counts, which also makes me [[Stay motivated with recurring small dopamine hits]].

> _”I like shipping things, and shipping consistently has helped put me at the forefront of a number of big shifts in technology over the past few decades." - Seth Godin_




Always be shipping

Invest in force multipliers

Work in public

Talk to people

Build a diverse network

# Have an aptitude for serendipity

My career is almost entirely based on serendipitous connections. While they are random chance, of course, the one thing I take credit for is having (what I like to call) an “aptitude for serendipity”. I try to create as many opportunities for luck to strike me as possible.

Some ways I try to influence serendipity are:

* [[Iterate as fast as possible]] and [[Get more parts on the table]] so I have a higher chance of inventing something novel. ([[Invent by combining things in new ways]])
* [[Always be shipping]] so serendipity has as many chances as possible to strike one of them.
* [[Work in public]], [[Talk to people]] and [[Build a diverse network]] so more people have a chance of stumbling upon my ideas and connecting them with their own thoughts.

Personally, publishing open source projects has been a great way to do this. There is no downside, assuming you [[Solve your own problems]], and the upside could be career-defining. My career was defined by react-boilerplate being posted and upvoted to the HackerNews frontpage!




# My filters for potential business ideas
_Inspired by [Derrick Reimer’s](https://www.derrickreimer.com/essays/2019/05/28/finding-my-next-bootstrapped-business-idea.html) excellent post._

[[I want to build an small business]] eventually, however I find coming up with ideas for one rather difficult. In order to quickly evaluate potential, I thought about a list of filters that help me focus on the right things.

## Are people searching for the problem on Google?
With [Changefeed](https://changefeed.app) we made the mistake of building a useful product that nobody knows they need. It requires sales to be successful (a skill I do not have) and is harder to sell than a product in an already existing market.

For my next business, I want to build something in a large market, something that people are already searching for on Google. Justin Jackson calls this “[Selling ice cream on a busy beach](https://justinjackson.ca/beach)”.

## Can I ship a first version in a few weeks?
Since I am bootstrapping, I cannot spend years (or really even months) on any given idea before figuring out if it’s valuable. While this can be hard to judge, I need to discard really hard problems, and ones outside of my expertise.

_Interestingly, this means the more I [[Invest in the best tools]] the more potential options are available to me, as it should take me less time to build things._

## Is my audience going to use it?
Ideally, my product should be useful for my existing audience. I spend a lot of time building it, so it would be great if that overlapped with the product I was building. (We bootstrapped [[Spectrum]] that way) 

Since my audience is largely like me, this would also mean I’m following [[Solve your own problems]].

## Bonus: Would it make my users money?
If my product (directly or indirectly) makes my users money, they are more likely to pay me a portion of that. A great example would be egghead.io: they make their instructors money directly, and their viewers money by helping them level up and get better jobs. Win-win!




# My life’s mission

[[🌱]]
Reflecting on my career, the common thread throughout my work seems to be that I make developers’ lives easier.

Obviously, all of my open source work is focused on this but even my most successful product, [[Spectrum]], ended up implicitly being focused on this! (and, in hindsight, we should have explicitly focused on it)

This is probably a byproduct of the fact that I [[Solve your own problems]]. Because I am a developer, it is easy for me to spot and solve problems developers have and I love doing it.




My filters for potential business ideas

My life’s mission

# Solve your own problems

Publishing solutions to your own problems has a great /worst/ case scenario great: you never have to solve that problem again.

It also has a great /best/ case scenario: your solution could be discovered by other people and it could propel your career forward.

You have to solve your own problems anyway, so it's a great way to [[Have an aptitude for serendipity]]. Might as well share your solutions and have the option of getting lucky! It also makes [[Always be shipping]] (and thus [[Stay motivated with recurring small dopamine hits]]) much easier.




How I overcome the Resistance

2020-03-24

# Stay motivated with recurring small dopamine hits

The best way I have found to stay motivated once I have started working is to get constantly give myself small dopamine hits. I try to [[Always be shipping]] tiny changes, to [[Iterate as fast as possible]] and to [[Measure output, not outcomes]] to make that happen.

The idea is from the great book “The Motivation Myth”, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Here are some quotes from the book itself about this:

> _“Motivation isn’t something you have. Motivation is something you get, from yourself, automatically, from feeling good about achieving small successes.”_
> _“If you want to stay motivated, if you want to stay on track, if you want to keep making progress toward the things you hope to achieve, the key is to enjoy small, seemingly minor successes—but on a regular basis.”_




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Solve your own problems

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