If you’re one of these people, this is for you.
There are so many things that excite me, and I want to try them all out, but I can’t seem to find the time for them. I thought the solution was to simply quit your job and go all in on something that you’re passionate about.
While that could be true. What a lot of people don’t realize is once we decide to do that, we spend all of our time and efforts trying to make that work. Because now it’s your life, it’s your oxygen, so you need to make it work. As a result, you drop everything else unrelated to that project and dedicate your life towards that. And that results in an immediate loss of creativity and exploration. Because now you’re in survival mode and you’re no longer thriving.
I experienced this first-hand with Audora. I spent the past three months laser-focused on making Audora work, finding how to make it work during market research, and just spiraling into this never-ending loop of trying to figure things out while being so lost in that process.
I didn’t know how to get help from people. I thought I had to figure something out first. Before I could do that, and so I mostly did not reach out to a lot of people.
What I’m realizing now is there is a better way to do things. It starts with you switching from survival mindset to thriving. You need to be in that mindset of thriving because when you’re in survival mode, you don’t think outside the box, you don’t think too creatively. You have a very narrow point of view on things. And you’re not talking to anyone else as well which makes it even worse.
So for most people, that would mean that they need to remain in their jobs, their full-time jobs. For others, it would mean they should go full-time on their creative side because they just have a lot of money so they don’t need to sustain themselves anymore, which is amazing. That’s the best option. For most of us, a full-time job is the only way to be in that thriving mindset.
why?
if you’re wondering why, well, what I’ve noticed in myself, and what I’m sure the science can also back, is that your brain starts to welcome ideas and thoughts much more. It’s much more receptive to these things, and it directly aligns with what Paul Graham advocates for. He advocates for not searching for a startup idea; it just finds you because of your personal experience and these are the best ideas because you are deeply ingrained in these experiences and you’re deeply thinking about these experiences all the time. So, eventually, you will be able to find gaps in that experience, find problems, and we really have to be very introspective and have a clear mind, a very healthy mind with good sleep, so you’re able to think sharply. Otherwise, you won’t be a magnet for crazy ideas
What does that mean for me?
building out a product like Audora is not something that we successfully launched in a few months. But what’s very possible in that timeline is building micro-apps/micro tools that align with what Audora wants to do (Audora’s ultimate vision) and use that as a way to test out the waters to understand my customers, to build a community around them. Because there’s no better way to learn but through the data of the masses. And at least for me, I feel like as soon as I know that something is actually being used by people, it unlocks another dimension of energy and responsibility. Because you know your work is actually meaningful not only for yourself but for millions of others
andrew agrees