a8b.io
I'm slightly annoyed about the fact that a lot of software tacks on AI insights as its own feature rather than embedding where its helpful. It just feels like it's there for marketing rather than to aid the customer experience. Can we normalize using it to improve our products and get rid of the sparkle buttons?
I (very) recently accepted a new position, joining back into the workforce as an engineer. This is a slightly bittersweet and hopefully not final departure from the more entrepreneurial things I've been engaged with over the last few years. However as I shift into this new position, something that comes with it is clarity. It is easier than ever to see what needs to be done and how to succeed in my role. If there is anything I've learned over the last few years it's how to deal with ambiguity and my own moods.
I'm doing my own "pre-onboarding" process where I'm shifting my knowledge intake, that has been primarily focused on entrepreneurial, business, and marketing material to more engineering and domain (insurance) material. One thing that strikes me is how little of the information in front of me I consume now, and how relevant the notes I take are. I used to methodically read books and take very high level notes. However more recently I've become set on this idea that books are subjective. What you'll take from them depends on what you're working on, what mindset you're in, etc. even factual books.
Today I've reinforced the idea that the most useful way to take notes is to take notes on what you think is important. This means your notes are probably less generally useful, but are more useful to you. And that those notes should probably tie to what you're working on. In my case my notes are highly specific for what I think will be relevant to this role. I think a lot of these principles on note taking are similar to what I've seen in the summary of "building a second brain" however I haven't dug into the actual book itself as it's low priority. The way I determined that was from reading the summary and seeing how many things stood out as relevant or surprising. If I read the whole thing and nod my head in agreement to the summary, there's probably not much to be gained
I gave the book Staff Engineer by Will Larson a skim today, and it was quite good. I read the part about writing engineering strategy quite thoroughly as I think the concept is quite new to me. In general I don't think I've operated under written out engineering strategies in the past, and they seem extremely helpful for improving design. The details about how to do it, and the heuristics of when to do it outlined in the book where amazingly useful. Of course the fact that I found this section useful, and not the section on prioritization for example is just dependent on who I am reading the book and what other information I know which is why I say what I take away from things is subjective. There's also a lot of interesting threads w.r.t. links in the book to articles and the books and papers referenced in the back of the book. I think that might be the main reason for me to be convinced to check out a book that I already mostly agree with, would be to check the referenced or recommended material.
I was just thinking about how I have so many empty fancy notebooks. There's a subconscious prioritization that everything I write in them must be worth writing. It must be final, and good, and worthy of being there.
But there's a sinister corollary which is that the process is not good enough, is not worthy of being there. I think I should start using my notebooks, if anything to tell myself that this is what's worth writing about.
I think, in a way that people writing more raw and unfiltered is a natural evolution from generative AI. As people start asking AI more things and relying less on reading things from search results themselves, raw ideas will become more valuable. You needn't be as polished in presentation as long as the content is there, as it's being rewritten by a machine anyway. Similarly my own notes are becoming less structured and more about getting things down, as AI can answer questions as long as the data is there. I don't this will displace traditional blogging but is something that will become valuable on top of it.
Today I feel defeated. For a long time I've tied giving up, or the actual act of defeat in my case, with the sense of defeat. But I definitely feel defeated. And that's okay. I am accepting that over the last two and a half years I've failed to create a sustainable future down the path I wanted. There have been a lot of good things to come out of it. A lot of self growth, a sense of autonomy and taking control of my life. Yes, I've learned things technically as well as about operating a business. But I've also made real friends. I perform regularly on stage in front of people, am intrinsically motivated to go to the gym, and have gotten to a place with work where I feel like I'm at play. These are amazing things that I feel really good about for myself. It does not discredit them to feel defeated. To accept that right now in me is the feeling of defeat is not the same as to accept defeat. It's accepting the reality of my emotional state, and once that is accepted I can move on from a place of truth rather than resistance or fear.
It just occured to me today that the sunk cost fallacy applies to finding solutions to problems. The more you invest in a particular route the more emotional you get about making that particular way work.
I spent hours yesterday trying to fix an issue with routing on next.js with custom hosts. In the end I was so invested in trying to make it work through cloud front that I only investigated that path. Maybe there's something there about wanting to validate my previous decisions or intuition as correct. And to be fair there definitely is a way to make it work down that path. But as I was on a walk just now, and spending about the first 20 minutes feeling upset and frustrated at how things are going and looping over those feelings, I just stopped in the middle of the walk and pulled out my phone. I was going to solve it. So with that in mind, thinking how do I solve this, not how do I make this work. I went down a completely different path and found a solution in like 2 minutes. I'm not discounting the importance of mental space in problem solving. That solution may have been brewing subconsciously. But I was surprised how quickly I found it when I realized what I was clinging to.
It's funny that when I tell myself I'm going to solve this I immediately widen my options. Which tells me when I'm sitting on my computer, worried about making something work that I'm more interested in those emotions of frustration, and proving/disproving something that is at the root of that frustration, than actually trying to solve the problem. Interestingly when I have a deadline I tend to force myself into the state of letting go of potential solution paths quite readily.
What's the best thing to do about all this? Probably not enforce artificial deadlines all over the place, though I do that sometimes. But that thing I've been working on lately to notice my emotions as they're happening. If I notice the frustration I can feel it and let it be and move on instead of becoming stuck on proving something. Once I've let go of it, I can come back and find a solution.
Another thing that occurs to me is to investigate multiple possible solutions early on rather than diving into just one. That's kind of hard because 90% of the time the solution lies perfectly fine down that first path, and that kind of feels like I'm putting a crutch in place of my ability to let go when I need to.
A note to myself: Write about over engineering when those thoughts are fully formed 💭
There's a lot of advice out there on how to build software startups and I find that a lot of it doesn't apply to me. Simply because I am optimizing to be happy and fulfilled. That means I am not necessarily building the best thing I could build in terms of monetary outcome. The act of building software to me at the moment is a creative art. I find myself influenced heavily by @naval, Derek Sivers, and Rick Rubin e.g. in his book The Creative Act. The idea of software being art created for its own purpose, through me rather than by me, is extremely appealing and relevant to me.
I have tried other ways of being. I've started elsewhere. My first project was me searching for an arbitrage opportunity. Finding one, I didn't necessarily like how spammy it felt (this is because it didn't really help anyone), and I wasn't sure I had the will or interest to move it forward because it wasn't worth the headache, and moving on. Then I worked on another thing that was an arbitrage based business, and while I enjoyed some of the software bits I wasn't into the company as a whole. I had issues converting users, and when I realized the "easy arbitrage opportunity", wasn't as labeled on the tin, I got disheartened. I was having trouble converting trial users to paid subscribers. So when it faced issues with the credit card processor I actually just shut it down. There were a few other things, and most recently a Shopify plugin that I did actually really enjoy building, and, though not there yet does somewhat solve a real problem albeit not my problem. I haven't given that one up yet, it's just on hold while I work on this. But when I compare working on Jopro vs. Hypersonal (the Shopify plugin) the difference is night and day.
It's easy to look at all these projects and say that I quit too early. After all that is the biggest mistake you hear everyone saying when it comes to startups. But I quit my job to find something I enjoyed. And if I didn't enjoy what I was doing, and had to force myself to do it, why continue? I wasn't doing these projects for fame, glory, or large payouts. I wasn't even doing it for "freedom", though I've grown to appreciate it, and now prioritize it. I was doing it because I wanted to find more fulfillment. And if I didn't find it here, why not go back to a traditional job? There was a lot I liked and missed about it. Interestingly the thing pulling me back to optimizing for money to some degree, despite me consciously not playing that game or optimizing for it, was the fear of failing, and maybe more specifically and honestly the fear of being dumb. Because of that I constantly self sabotaged to move towards projects that were actually wrong for me.
I looked back at the thing I enjoyed the most in the last few years, which was prototyping, creating, and bringing to market a physical product that solved a real problem I had. I made it just because that thing annoyed me and I thought it annoyed other people too. It brought me great joy to bring it to the market place, and I enjoyed all the little bits of engineering, learning so many new things, and making a good solution that I liked and thought would bring others joy. I was proud of it, maybe for the wrong reasons, but I did genuinely enjoy it. So I decided to do something similar now, which is where Jopro comes from. I write a lot, and I believe strongly in the power of some of these reflective protocols I engage in.
With building Jopro I find it easy to get into flow now. I don't have to use a lot of external tools like I did when working on Hypersonal. I had weekly and daily to do lists, I leveraged flow club, boss as a service, co-working communities (that I still participate in) and mentors to help me move forward. I celebrated putting in effort to motivate myself to move forward. I split my personality into executor/programmer Ameer and planner/manager Ameer. I don't think these things are bad, mind you. They're actually really effective for me. And I don't necessarily dislike being in that state. But it does not feel as playful or joyful or effortless. It's not as sustainable, and I don't get nearly as much done. What I do now feels different. Everything comes bursting out of me, instead of being forced out. I work on this just because I think it's a really cool thing that I want to exist, and I think it will genuinely help people. And I use it all the time. And I care deeply about it. I care about the way the layout flows as you scale the browser to half screen. I care about the saving indicators and how they appear, and if they're too noisy, and the little widgets on the settings page that need custom APIs to work like checking for custom URL availability. I care about all the mundane things that I usually don't particularly. I'm not saying I will always care about every little detail. Or that I will never feel bad and need some motivational help. But I really enjoy the mindset I find myself in at the moment, the joy I get from creating, and the sense of sustainable enthusiasm I have for the product.
In short, what works for me is to not focus on monetary outcome or potential when it comes to a project. And I need to stop tricking myself in to that. Rather to focus on solving a real problem that I have that is important to me and to others. Something that I think needs to exist in the world. And approaching the problem as a piece of art. Having an opinion about the thing and expressing it. I know it won't survive contact with users, and that's okay. That is better than not bringing anything from you to the table and trying to get the market to tell you what to do. That is an easy way to build a product you don't care about.
I'm (finally) taking Naval's advice to find work that feels like play. I'm taking his advice that if you wouldn't work on it for 5 years then don't spend 5 minutes on it (paraphrased). I realize now the difference being motivated intrinsically makes. Not only do I enjoy the work so much more, but I am getting so much more done. This whole process just makes sense and seems to be clicking for me now. Shallow work rarely accrues rewards. While something like Jopro may not have as much market potential as Hypersonal, it solves a real problem that both I and others care about, and most importantly I want to keep on working on because I want it to exist.
