I worked with John Arundel for a few months at the beginning of last year, the dude who runs Bitfield Consulting.
I told him my ambition: to run my own little software shop. He told me I’d do well to start by running a consultancy and using that to get familiar with people’s problems.
To this day, I find the advice hard to swallow. I want to write my own little programs and be happy. I think he’s right, though, that I’d be better off selling my time for myself instead of selling it for a salary.
Cal Newport wrote in Deep Work that people who can concentrate are becoming a lost commodity, people who can read and read until they understand are becoming valuable. I don’t know if that’s true, but I do know I spent a lot of last year just regaining my ability to focus. I was sober for about 9 1/2 months, I made myself spend more time reading, I got medications for some focus issues.
I dream; I dream and dream and get frustrated when it hasn’t helped. It’s time to take advice from Kai Greene instead. He said in a great documentary that a world class body builder isn’t the most knowledgeable person in the room; they’re the person who built out small habits, one day at a time.
Here’s a beautiful quote from him:
Those star moments that fill the highlight reels and leave the audience in awe to watch, those seconds are built on thousands and thousands and thousands of hours…basic fundamentals being applied over and over and over again. Getting up a certain time, doing certain things, cooking your meals, keeping the disciplines, keeping a checklist. Those are the things that string together to make a day of efficient action.
The more of those days of efficient action you string together, the more likely you are to succeed.
