The Abuse of Reason

Why are there always so many other things to do?

When I was a full-time indentured employee it always seemed like life was absurdly simple. You got up, you got to work and you got paid. You went home, spent time with family, possibly groomed and then repeat.

It was tediously simple, of course, without the promise of any exotic distraction or life-altering change.

However ever since I started a business, I have been confounded by the number of opportunities I’ve had to become distracted from my main goals, both from self-sabotaging and from external temptations and cons. I also suspect this situation is worse in some industries (like the video games industry).

I imagine that people who are very good at recognizing the value of things, a skill they probably picked up in childhood, or maybe it’s innate, do not get easily distracted, and are able to resist the lures of tantalizing additional opportunities, business deals, etc.

For me this skill has come slowly and with hard fought battles, many lost, and usually at a price. Since I started Bamboo Raven (ca. 2009) I have:

• taken 2 informal classes in an attempt to bolster my business acumen
• gone to 3 expensive conferences in an attempt to drum up business that never materialized
• worked with a remote team who never delivered on their part of our deal, wasting nearly a full year’s worth of work and many thousands of dollars
• accepted a business proposal from a family member who changed the terms of our deal - that was a waste of about 4 months
• been approached by at least 2 dozen people who variously want to buy, work with or promote my company. At least one of these was so convincing that I wasted several days flying out to meetings and then meeting a few times locally
• taken consulting jobs and other work that has lasted anywhere around 6 months to a week
• drafted business plans for about 20 (yes) other business ideas
• taken a formal class in entrepreneurship and worked on a small prototype
• and that’s not even counting the interference, which is probably unavoidable, from family and household tasks

These are all my fault exclusively. Some are due to lack of due diligence. Some are personality flaws. Are all of these things which are external to the business a waste of time? Definitely not. It’s important to keep trying new things, keep learning and to avoid becoming too entrenched in a routine.  It’s also important to set life priorities, and sometimes business comes second.

However beware the tendency for outsiders to insidiously attempt to siphon away your precious time as soon as they find out you’re doing something. I don’t know what causes it, but it’s probably a form of Resistance. I’ve probably wasted other people’s time too, without realizing it. The onus has to be on you to recognize what’s not in line with your main goals and simply say no.

The smart money is in these specific endeavours (or another way to put it, adding new features and testing hypotheses) and if you’re spending too much time doing anything else you’re probably, like me, wasting too much time.

Doing what you love means NOT doing what you hate

It’s 11:11pm (23:11) and I should have been in bed at least an hour ago but I’m up thinking about ways to to get momentum going for my new startup idea. 

Like many bootstrapping entrepreneurs I have been dabbling in consulting/contract work while doing customer development for the startup on the side. It’s been like that for nearly two years, but when I left my last office position I said to my wife (and the rest of my family) “no more!” This was going to be the last time I would put off doing what I love just to chase a cheque and “that’s who I was now”. 

My parents blanch whenever I talk like this. To them I am a symbol of their failure to properly inculcate solid middle-class values of hard work and fealty to employers. It doesn’t matter that I regularly work 11-14 hours a day (either on my thing or a combination of contracts and my thing) plus share in domestic duties consisting of raising our twin 2 year old sons.  It also doesn’t matter to them that the idea of a middle class and employer loyalty is vanishing faster than the Greenland ice sheet. To them I’m just nuts. And maybe I am, so what? 

It’s complicated by the fact that I have DSPS, so for me, a full-time 9-5 job has never been…practical. I was born to be an entrepreneur and a risk-taker, even though I didn’t learn this until a few years ago, in my mid-thirties. Sometimes it feels like I’m struggling against the tide of time and knowledge that I should have been gaining in my teens and early 20s. Back then I had no idea that my living, and the future of my family, would depend on my abilities to create (creativity) and reason (logic) and hustle (entrepreneurship). Those things weren’t on my radar, as I was bred to be a drone and so sometimes, even though it’s illogical, I feel like I’m being forced to pursue a dream, against my inner employee, and even my better judgement.

Luckily my wife understands me, and  she is fully supportive…except when I do something like …well, what I did today.

You see last week I was contacted by a recruiter. This is someone I’ve worked with for a while now, several years at least. This time, the job they had was with a well-known company in town. It was just a 6 month contract. It paid really well, unusually well, in fact. And it was for work that would be relatively easy. The problem was it wasn’t particularly interesting or inspiring work. I resisted at first, and indicated I probably wouldn’t take it. After some more pressuring I relented and agreed to interview at least. Out of loyalty to the recruiter, was that the reason, or was it the money? Either way I knew it was out of alignment with my goals. 

Still interviewing is in itself a useful skill to sharpen, so I showed up, on time, and even bothered to wear a shirt and shave. The interview went really well, absurdly well, in fact. It wasn’t even the dept. manager who ran the interview, instead a project manager and a UI consultant who seemed to take a shine to me. At the end of the interview I mentioned in passing, my interest in video games and the UI consultant mentioned that her husband worked for a local developer. He was living his dream. They had moved here for that reason. Hmm.

A day or two later I found out I was in, it was a done deal. Offer some references and pass the security check. Ok, fine. What the hell, I mean I really could use the money. My wife’s contract is up in a few weeks and there is no clear sign where the next mortgage payment is coming from. Oh, remember the two kids? I sure do.

So I’ll need to get another car. It’s just for a few weeks, maybe lease one or borrow a friend’s. Then there’s insurance. Now start ironing some clothes. When is the last time I had to do ironing, not for a while. The morning logistics are going to be interesting, wife leaves for her 2 hour commute, then I get the kids up, change diapers and dress them, feed them, load them into the car (which I need to find) and drop them off at the day home, then fight traffic to get into my cubicle on the opposite end of the city before 8:30am. hmm.

Now I’m in a horrible funk. Is this laziness? Am I just spoiled by working at home, another entitled North American slacker who can’t make sacrifices for his own family, for his kids for pasta’s sake? Entrepreneurship is a young man’s game, we all know that. There’s no room for this kind of single-minded focus, not with a family, right old man? Not taking the job would be irresponsible, right?

I couldn’t sleep at all last night. I’m up now. What is wrong with just taking a quick job for half a year and then use the money to fuel another 6 months of freedom? Nothing. There is nothing wrong with that. 

However I’m probably not going to do this. Just come in and sign the paperwork tomorrow. No. I’m not going to sign. Instead I’m going to read this post by Michael Abrash.

The only thread that runs through it is that I did what I loved, even though most of the time it wasn’t what I was supposed to be doing and seemed counterproductive.

And I’m going to burn the bridge with the recruiter, and piss off the company that was ready to hire me and pay me a generous wage. I’m going to annoy my wife, and put our credit rating at risk, again. Am I nuts? Yes, undoubtedly. Am I selfish? Possibly, but I feel better already.

Then I’m going to kill the little employee inside me, and feed his corpse to my hungry children. Then I’m going to code.

tumblrbot asked: WHERE WOULD YOU MOST LIKE TO VISIT ON YOUR PLANET?

I’ve always had a hankering to visit the godless heathens of Scandinavia, tread on their grassy rooftops and paddle my canoe lazily across their solar-powered climate-controlled aquifers.  Also a road trip around the southern USA seems like a good adventure tour.