Twenty Four, New Starts and Updates
I suppose it's about time to dust this blog off with another annual update. So first off I'm now twenty four, which even after two months still scares the heck out of me. Where do I begin? This year has been a really strange one. I've frequently found myself questioning things that I was almost certain of a couple of years ago, and for the first time in a while I'm feeling increasing lost and confused about the direction I'm heading in. When I look back I guess I've always had quite clear goals for myself and I always thought I knew the path I needed to take to get there, but I'm not sure I really did anymore. I think another factor is simply that I'm really quite content with where I am right now, I've got a lot of the things that I wanted over the last few years and now I'm struggling with how to start a new chapter.
Another thing that's bothered me recently is how I react when I hear these 17 year old kids at tech meetups tell me how they're going to make the next big website or product. I no longer get excited, I just worry for them. It's been nearly 10 years since I started that journey and honestly, if there is one thing I've learnt, it's that 99% of the time it'll get you'll get no where. And the problem is sometimes it distracts you from the things that actually can get you somewhere, studying, work experience, etc. Perhaps more importantly though is how it can distract you from just living in general. It kills me to think about the amount of hours, days and weeks of my youth that I've pour into projects that go less than no where. Time is extremely important, maybe the most important skill we can ever learn is to manage it effectively. You don't need me to tell you that spending 5 hours a day watching reality TV isn't a good use of your time, but I promise if you're spending that 5 hours working on a project that goes nowhere and teaches you nothing it's almost just as wasteful. If you're putting a considerable amount of time into something each week, whether that be TV or reading, it's important to routinely consider how that activity is impacting your life. Does it make you happy, and would you be happier if you were spending that time in some other way? Does it help you open doors, or does it just keep you where you are? Ideally everything you do should be both enjoyable but also assist you in achieving the goals you're shooting for. To bring this concept on to startups I vow that this year I will not start a project and potentially waste my time unless it meets the following criteria:
- It's interesting and enjoyable to work on
- It won't take more than two months to reach MVP
- It requires me to learn something I know absolutely nothing about that I'm interested in learning
- There is a clear and identifiable market and revenue model
- I, or the people I am working with have all the tools necessary to build, market and sale the product
Something else I want to talk about is new starts. I don't really care much about the "new year, new start" mantra - the only thing that's really ever new is the label we use to describe it. But, this year it seems quite fitting for me at least. My house was robbed about a week before Christmas and with it, a bag with all the memories I had kept. Postcards, zoo tickets, recipes, notes. Just little things that I could keep to remind me of happy times I've had. I have no idea why they took what was, to anyone else, just a bag of paper. But, they did, and I just need to accept some of the memories I had attached to those silly bits of paper are now gone forever. So now I'm here. I'm twenty four. Caught somewhere between a past that I have no record of and a future I have no idea how to start. And I'm excited to see how this will play out.
Finally, I have a lot of topics I want to write about this year. For the past three years I've been keeping track of everything interesting I've learnt, condensing it down into little bites of information that I want to start publishing here. So with a bit of luck there will be some more content here over the next few months.
Author
Hello, I'm Lee.I'm a developer from the UK who writes about technology and startups. Here you'll find articles and tutorials about things that interest me. If you want to hire me or know more about me head over to my about me page
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