with all due respect, the biggest obstacle to your Freedom is this loop:
> unwanted emotion
> strategy to avoid it
> short-term payoff
> strategy generates more unwanted emotion
You are your own worst enemy. You waste precious time dreaming of the future instead of engaging in the present. Since nothing seems urgent to you, you are only half involved in what you do. The only way to change is through action and outside pressure.
There’s a word for building something in your head and refusing to show it to the world until it’s perfect.
That word is stalling.
The sculptor analogy I always come back to: when you’re doing iterative testing, you have to get used to having your perfect sculptures squished. You spend two weeks crafting something beautiful — the right messaging, the right design, the right flow — and then you find out it doesn’t work. Squish. Start over.
If you can’t handle that, you’ll find yourself building bigger and bigger sculptures, taking more and more time, spending more and more money — all in service of delaying the moment when reality gets to weigh in.
Perfectionism assumes you know what “perfect” looks like in advance. You don’t. I didn’t. Nobody does.
No business plan ever survives a collision with a real customer.
mature things tend to get pressured into being less weird over time, so if you're starting from scratch your advantage is that you can be very weird
if you don't start weird you're probably trying to compete inside the local maximum of something more boring than you could be
building a company is largely the act of managing your own emotional state so the field around you remains coherent enough for other ppl to do their best work inside it.
basically founders set the emotional physics of the org. panic compounds. but clarity compounds too.
Whenever I feel stuck, I add structure to my days. Map out what you’re going to do for a day in 30 minute increments. It doesn’t have to be the “right” stuff. It just needs to be something. Then stick to it for an entire day. You’ll feel in control and create momentum. It works.
Being busy is not being able to add anything else to your calendar. Being fulfilled is not wanting to add anything else to your calendar. Don’t confuse one for the other.