I haven’t been writing any blog articles for a while now. And this one is actually very spontaneous. After a short consideration about what to write about after such a long period of time, thinking how I should re-enter and where to start, I have decided to basically write about my thoughts and learnings since the last time I wrote an article, of course focusing onto the theme of this blog, meaning my mindset, and conception of myself as a continuous improving and learning individual.
I clearly remember. My desired time of return to the blogging was about two months ago. I had reread one of my favorite books if not the one “Atomic Habits” and was convinced that a deep dive review would be an ideal comeback. I assure you, one will come soon.
But that project (writing the review) is procrastinated more and more. I simply couldn’t; or formulated correctly: did not do it. But why? The reason is the most obvious one: procrastination, formulated in Paul Graham’s words: per project procrastination—the most dangerous one among them. Because you put it off and off never realizing how much time has passed since the last time you have intended to do it. So I have re-realized there is no thing as the perfect time. Pick the least bad time to do it and just do it. Whatever it is. Just do it, now.
This obvious and cliché sounding slogan of Nike actually is alluding a lot than it appears to be, in my consideration.
First meaning I got was the before-mentioned “avoid putting off and simply do it now” part. The second one was one of my biggest misconceptions about success and my understanding of becoming a valuable individual:
It really is about simply doing the thing, not vibing to do so. What do I mean?
Especially when I was introduced to entrepreneurship and startups this was peaking. I attended every entrepreneurship event, read books about management and startups planned things, thought about startup ideas and so on, mainly neglecting other aspects, particularly the ones related to education. This was a fatal mistake. Even though I think these are fine actions to take and might contribute to my goals later at some point, I was lacking the most importing thing: just f*cking simply doing the thing. This flipped a switched in me as I watched and listened to the speech of Paul Graham in YC Startup lectures in 2015.
What he was saying made so sense to me that I got my understanding of becoming a valuable and educated individual changed drastically. He said:
“The optimal thing to do in college if you want to be a successful startup founder, it’s not some sort of new vocational college focused on entrepreneurship (which I was literally doing at the time). It’s the classic version of college, as the education for its own sake.”
This phrase got me immensely inspired. Though I will definitely write a review featuring this speech, I should point out this was exactly the thing I needed to hear. He basically was telling: do the thing, not try to figure out how to do it. It’s simple.
If I want to start a deep tech startup that has a meaningful mission, then I have to educate myself about deep tech and not about entrepreneurial concepts. And I won’t be able to achieve such goals with just vibing it and neglecting math classes. So after that point I set all that entrepreneurship, management, business things aside and started to solely focus on my own education. What he means by education though is not the “passing exams and getting the degree” part, where you just need to trick out the system and learn all the old exams by heart. No, it means, real education, educating and building oneself for its own sake. To that he says: “Learn powerful things.” Like indicated above, there will be a detailed review on this topic, because of it has got much more value than mentioned here.
So in short: Do the thing itself. Not the vibing.
This shifted my view and focus from becoming a successful startup founder (outcome) to becoming a valuable and well-educated (technical) individual. Valuable has no means to materialistic meaning of value though. A valuable man is in my opinion he who can create value for others with his knowledge and skills. So my goal now is to build that knowledge and skills, and learn powerful things that I also have a genuine interest for, in this era of my life, where I have to most energy and time: in my 20s.
For that I have outlined three main themes that I truly care and am curious about and want to learn, improve and master:
- Human Health & Performance
- Physics & Astronomy
- Tech & Engineering
Even though they are pretty broad right now, with time and depth into the topics they will become more precise and specific. Last time in “A Meaningful Mission” I wrote that I want to learn more about and possibly pursue a career in AI. My research and learning still continues. So as an innovationist I try to pick and learn things that are at the cutting edge of “future-promising/powerful” and “interesting and meaningful to me”.
In this new chapter of this blog, there will be articles featuring topics related to these three fields and perhaps less about entrepreneurship or productivity.
So all in all, I think one should frequently reflect these two things to stay focused and active: do not procrastinate (1) and do the obvious but perhaps boring or challenging main-task (2). In order to do so, one can code these principles with the simple call2action “Just do it” (even if I like Adidas more, its a strong slogan). And additionally, focus on the process and not on the possible outcome. As a famous innovationist puts it: “Aspire to work, not to glory.”
