notes #1: The life you (really) want

Hey friends,

It’s currently 12am and I’ve just finished reading a book that was written by two Stanford professors about how to design your life.

It got me thinking about where I am and where I’m going. Again (I’ve had this conversation with myself many times).

Flashback…

Four years ago, I went head-first into investing (selecting stocks) — not so much for the money, but for how powerful a skill. I learnt the ins and outs of it through books, annual reports and various research tools.

I spent a good two years on this, participating in several pitch competitions and did my own investments.

But gradually, I got bored. More than that, I felt that it wasn’t what I really wanted to do. I wanted to be on the other end of investing — creating and building stuff. And so not long afterwards, I decided to start a business.

My first venture was not a traditional business, but to create content on YouTube. And I was terrible at it. Every stage of it was a nightmare, from the script writing to the video editing. And I didn’t realise it then but it was because I was starting from scratch — it was a steep learning curve.

Anyway, I associated the initial difficulty of it with my lack of talent and moved on after creating two to three 10-min videos.

That’s when I came across programming, and I thought I hit the jackpot. I was good at it and I enjoyed it. I started learning everything about it and built a couple of projects.

At this time, I was still very interested in building a business and a brilliant idea came to me: software x businesses.

Since then, I have built 4-5 working software applications and started a few businesses with friends.

Anyway, I ended up concluding that this was not the way forward. I had a lot of reasons then (or excuses) but I ended up back in content creation.

I went one full circle.

A process of elimination

What seemed like a waste of time if I had just committed was actually a series of lessons that made me better understand what I want to do — or more commonly known as “trial and error” — and my strengths and weaknesses.

The above process is a necessary evil to figure out what you really want — as noted by “Designing Your Life” authors Bill Burnett and Dave Evans.

The design mindset, commonly applied to product design, can be used in creating the lives we want but don’t often know how. Here’s the mindset they suggested:

• Curiosity: about exploring and seeing everything as new — creates opportunities where no one else may see it

• Bias to Action: constantly trying out new stuff until something works, without being attached to a particular outcome

• Reframing: considering different points of view to get unstuck, examining your biases, and incorporating new information

• Awareness: understand that it’s a journey and appreciate the process, letting go of first ideas and embracing mistakes

• Radical Collaboration: asking for help and working with others leads to some of the best ideas

Or in one line: just keep trying — seek new experiences, perspectives and people.

You never know if you don’t try. You can think as much as you’d like, or read a million books, or fantasised up into the heavens, but only experience will have the final say.

Remember that your path will be very different from others, no matter how much you admire or seek their ways.

And so begins my 5-year (and more) journey to being a creator.

Cheers,
Joesurf

🧠 What’s On My Mind

📖 Book — Designing Your Life Is about identifying the problems you face in your life (and work) and finding creative ways to address those problems so that work (a big part of life) becomes a fulfilling and memorable thing.

• Odyssey Plan: a framework to plan your life and consider alternate possibilities

• Activity Log: a journalling tool to identify what you should do at work

📹 Video — Future of Creative Work Dan Koe shares some tips about creating content that matters, to you and to others. In his words, “the goal is to get paid for being yourself”.

💡 Quote of the Week