Before you start, write down all the necessary puzzle pieces and rank them from hardest to easiest. If you’re unsure how to rank certain parts, replace “hardest” with “scariest” or “most uncomfortable”. Then start with the hardest, scariest, most uncomfortable one.

Business plans have become kind of a joke in the startup world. Rightfully so.

Unlike in a normal job, the hours I sit at my desk don’t matter. All that counts is my output.

Why did you open this essay? Do you even have a reason? Did you even think about it? I bet the answer is no. And that, my friend, is a problem.

I know zero people personally who want to change the world. I don’t know anyone in real life who is on a non-standard path. No one who wants more out of life than anyone else and is fighting tooth and nails for their dream.

I’ve been asleep. Drifting. Pushing buttons for 10 hours every day but not accomplishing anything.

You know the “And All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt” meme right? My personal variant is:

A huge challenge everyone who decides to be self-employed needs to face is that there are suddenly no constraints. At school, university, or work, there are always deadlines and you had to carry pre-specified work using a pre-defined toolbox. But if you’re self employed, you can build anything, work on any project, using any tool, framework, or programming language.

One area of my life I struggled with for a long time is education. I love to learn but what I’ve been doing for a long time was far from systematic. I picked books at random. I mostly restricted myself to purely passive reading. I didn’t interact with other people that are interested in the same topic.