"First there’s the urban shift. The rush to suburbia is over; people want to live in the hearts of their cities – and not just during their student years. They will sacrifice space for location and so the ultimate city luxury becomes not owning a car but being able to walk to work. It is not an embarrassment but a boast to say that you have no car. Plus, where would you park it?"
"That’s how learning should be, and is how I still teach myself new skills today. I pick a project I want to see on the web and just start hacking away. I always like to pick an unfamiliar tool or technique which scares me a little bit, just to see if I can do it. You may struggle along the way as I always do, but maybe without knowing it, you’re part of the most collaborative and helpful network of people just by being active in our industry. There’ll always be someone willing to help.
If you feel excited and motivated about learning by creating something new, you’re doing it right. And then by sharing your experiences–however frustrating they may be–others will vicariously feed off that excitement and ultimately benefit."
"Resist the temptation to get a job. Instead, play. Find something you enjoy doing. Do it. Over and over again. You will become good at it for two reasons: you like it, and you do it often. Soon, that will have value in itself."
"Once you close that round and you get your Techcrunch hit, it’s all now in the past. Having a syndicate of all these famous top-notch investors doesn’t magically create great products. The only metric that matters now has a binary outcome. Have you built something that people want? If yes, prove it. If no, you didn’t make it."
"
Of course the story is the same when the company “runs off a cliff without leaving skidmarks,” never having extracted a single dime from a single person. The same struggle, same uncertainty, same near-impossibility.
So how do you tell the difference between the chaos that leads to unthinkable success and that which leads nowhere at all?
I’m not sure you can.
"
"We live in a highly individualistic culture. When we’re shopping for a vacation we’re primarily thinking about Where. The travel companies offer brochures showing private beaches and phenomenal sights. But when you come back from vacation, you primarily treasure the memories of Who — the people you met from faraway places, and the lives you came in contact with."
"
5. Learn to fear not shippingSeth Godin attributes much of his success not to producing better than others, but to shipping more than others. I’ve learned that the main reason we don’t ship as much as they could or should, is that we fear shipping for so many reasons. In this post I attempt to turn the fear on its head and highlight why we should really fear not shipping instead of shipping.
"
28th April 2012
Notes: 2
