I remember trying to teach myself python when I was 9 years old. I downloaded a book and couldn't understand how while and if statements could be used to build a functioning program that does something cool... So I stopped... Learnt Matlab 10 years later for 1st year university and the rest is history.
Yes: “Hey, our company is on the market for sale and I thought you might be interested in taking a look before we accept another offer.”
And you can tailor it based on the specifics.
Working with an advisor can sometimes make this easier because they can be more direct and say things like: “Competitor X has made an offer and I know it’d make your life difficult if this asset ended up in their hands, so I wanted to give you an opportunity to take a look first.”
By the way, waiting until you get an offer to start trying to bring in competing ones isn’t great, definitely better to do that as early as you can if you’re serious about selling. You risk pissing off the interested party if you’re making them feel like they’re just being used as leverage and drag things out before giving them an answer.
Solo founder; it tends to change rapidly depending on the stage of the product.
Probably 90% of the time writing code currently. Once the hardware product is released publicly it drops to 10% (maintenance) and then ramps up when new significant features are added.
Fun y you call it the hard work. I guess you mean hard as in, more "physical" so to say. The. Doing part is the easy work and flows well. The debugging and figuring out what do to solve problems is the hard part.
The figuring out and doing are the easy part. The hard part is breaking up your work in a way so you have something for the daily standup to talk about.
You found it a pain maybe, there are plenty of us that find it less of a pain than macOS (or, [shudders], Windows). I hear about plenty of grief using macOS from people who do use it and like it (and simultaneously love to talk about what a pain Linux supposedly is).
I was thinking of 'pure' Windows (including cygwin, mingw, gitpython etc. things I vaguely recall) - though I have struggled with and given up installing and using WSL in the past after I thought perhaps it would be fine with that.
Basically my main annoyances with macOS are window management & the way settings/preferences work and are stored. Windows is just worse in that sense to me I suppose.
I had a quick skim through the paper; but I may have missed the breakdowns by sport.
It would be interesting to see the statistics for sports that pay extremely well (NFL, Soccer, etc) compared to the Tier-2 sports (Volleyball, Track and Field, etc).
Tier-2 athletes have always had to juggle the prospect of never earning enough money with their sport and hence have had to focus on education too.
It's not surprising that after sporting careers the skills of being at the top of your sport (ambition, adversity, etc) transfer to Business and Finance.
A crucial point the post misses is the distinction between motivation and discipline.
Ultimately it's easy to work on things when they are fun and exciting; but motivation will only last for so long... once that happens it's the discipline that needs to take over for you to keep progressing forward.
In our industry, it's also very easy for the undisciplined person to succeed. You get a new job, it's exciting and the problems are new and motivating. After a few years the shine wears off, it becomes boring, you understand all the problems and they start to seem tedious. You find it difficult to really engage. But fortunately, the demand for software developers is so great that you can easily find a new job, and the cycle repeats.
Discipline is another way of saying habit. If you have no motivation to workout but you have the discipline, it's because you've made it a habit. It doesn't help to make a distinction because discipline is not something that is separate from motivation.
You get motivation to do something, run on that motivation as long as you can and hope it lasted long enough to make it a habit.
It's investing in your future self while the going is good. Like, build that habit while you're motivated because it will go away and you'll be left with it as a habit.
Build the habit to focus at will and discipline is less of an issue. I suppose focusing at will and doing what you think needs to be done is what discipline is.
On another note, one motivational trick I am applying nowadays with everything is to learn meta-skills like these in many different contexts (otherwise it won’t transfer).
Maybe it’s not another note. Maybe that’s the way how I stay motivated to focus at will for any given task.
It’s still early days. Also, I am doing this in conjunction with tackling my compulsion to go to YouTube.
I can have discipline, if I'm doing something for a purpose. Losing weight, getting a job, etc. My problem I always lose what the purpose of my solo project is. Or, I shoot so many holes in my own idea that I can't imagine it being useful to anyone.
So get an accountability "partner" - perhaps another person who is doing their own thing and having the same challenges you're having.
Or do the public progress showmanship thing (recurring blog or vlog posts about your project and the current status). I admire the people that go this route, but it frankly scares me since we're talking here on a forum of talented people, some of whom could just hear the project idea and probably get it built faster. So sharing seems to create a lot of risk.
My issue is that I don't give a shit about other people outside of those I care about. imo the whole coach thing is a cottage industry of bullshit artists.
If Linus Torvalds wanted to give me advice/coach me I'd damn well listen, even if I disagreed with it (and I'd question if I'm right because Linus is that good).
But the random joe blow whose entire career is coaching? I just have no respect for it.
An accountability partner isn't a coach. It could be, but it certainly doesn't have to be.
For example, an accountability partner could be a potential client/user that you're building a tool targeting. You keep them in the loop with regular updates, and that activity alone can help keep you moving forward even when you might have moments of doubt. If you know you _have_ to report status to someone weekly, you're less likely to blow a week off entirely. At minimum, you might wait until an hour before the meeting and hustle to do at least something.
I do this too. And the flipside is many audiences dont care about the idea or do but find one problem and churn off. So external feedback is hard. tricky one to solve. scratching your own itch can keep you motivated but doesn’t answer the demand question. The other way is to go full mom test and just do full time market research and product hat for months and only then build.
