Honest progress
I don't have talent, so I just get up earlier.
Almost every day now: 2h of deep work in the morning before heading off to work.
It ain’t much, but it’s honest progress.
This 2h of focus in the morning beats hands down, the 8h of distracted work for the rest of the day.
Quality over quantity.
Consistency over intensity.
Sometimes I feel that consistency’s all I’ve got. If I don’t do that, I got not much other strengths to bank on.
“I don’t have talent, so I just get up earlier.” — Henry Rollins
I don’t have talent, so I show up and put in the work.
I’m lacking in many areas—assets, skills, resources, and time—so I try and try again:
I’m not a senior developer with a decade experience working in a tech company. I’m not talented at programming. In fact, I hated math, and by relation, thought I hated programming. I never saw myself as logical and meticulous enough to ever be able to code. But I caught the maker bug… thankfully. The maker bug was the only thing that made me try again and again, I showed up first by attending online coding classes on Udemy and Youtube. First some HTML, CSS and PHP, then Ruby on Rails, then finally, Vue, when it finally finally stuck after I switched tack to learn by working on mini projects that can be done in a few days.
I disliked marketing. Thought it meant hardselling stuff, telling lies, manipulating people into buying. I felt salesmen were slimey and unethical. I was a shy and tall boy growing up, and since my teens I preferred to sit at the back of the classroom, and tried not to stand out. I was never any good at drawing attention to myself, lest being self-promotional. I valued authenticity and being real. So I truly struggled when I started marketing my products. But you make no revenue if you or your product stay in the shadows, so I forced myself to try. Made cold DMs. Tweeted everyday. Tried ads. Made a lot of cringey mistakes along the way, but eventually I learned I can market by way of helping others succeed. Sometimes it involved my solution, sometimes not. Creating goodwill out of genuine helpfulness was the first step to making a sale. Thankfully!
I might be a service designer now for 10 years but I never went to art or design school. I never learned Photoshop. I’m not wizard at Figma. My visual design is probably junior designer level, or lower. I’m not good at pixels. Everything was self taught, and on the job. Thankfully, I tore off my introvertedness and put myself out there, worked at my facilitation and design research skills through the years in public service, and found a tiny niche I could occupy, and make a living from for the past 10 years. I still don’t know Photoshop, and at this stage too afraid to ask haha.
As an indie parent, I’m time-starved, so I get up early to code or write, to make what little progress I can at the edges of my day. I sacrifice some sleep and health, so that my family and I have a better future. I give my best hours to the people important to me, and leave scraps for myself. Not ideal, but it is what it is.
I’m wasn’t built for this indie entrepreneur thing.
But I love building things.
And I know how to learn, how to be consistent.
It’s what I got. So I make the best out of it.
And after 4-5 years, skills are compounding and it’s starting to show results.
Thank god for that.
At some point, I was focused on what's my IQ and what IQ do I need to perform X task? But in the end, it's like talent. It doesn't really matter. What matters is that I'm moving forward on what moves the needle and brings results.
I find that playing the comparison game doesn't provide results. "He's faster than me in X" or "He's smarter than me." There's probably dozens of variables that would explain it and I might have had the same results if I had the same context. But I'll never know. So I try to remind myself that it doesn't matter and the most important is getting those results and getting closer to my goals.
Awesome!!