koolhead17
Focus is the key virtue in running a successful enterprise. It takes a sec to lose focus or get carried away on some new idea.
Having a core and sticking to it instead of pivoting over the advice of outsiders is a disaster for failure.
Most of us in this era can easily get carried away with influencers or friends who have got no skin in the name.
A lot of self-belief is needed to stay focused. This is where a mentor comes to rescue, they keep reminding you about the basic aka focus.
How do we know we are right?
How do we know that our history is not dubious?
How difficult it is to not have an opinion?
Can we not see this world as it is?
Why do we have to fight to prove our superiority on account of caste, creed, color, race or money?
How right are we in seeing everything wrong around us?
Products success hugely depends on understanding customers pain point. To get there the best way is to start using it internally or by ourself. It will help in making the team more empathetic with the end-user and delighting them.
1/ The biggest hindrance in building any product is noise from outside. It is from people who are not using your product but giving advice.
2/ Losing focus comes next to noise. It is very easy to get lost for winning customer and losing a circle of competence.
3/ Quick growth which means scaling, hiring, unpackaged product development and unclear moats.
4/ Marketing which should be the word to mouth by delighting customers turns into social media ads.
I have lived through a decade of tech hype. I started coding with LOGO. Much has changed since then.
Every 2-3 years I get to hear new buzzwords: virtualization, IaaS, SaaS, PaaS, Containers, federated, Docker, Bitcoin, Blockchain, serverless.
I have my friend Ashish who has been running the same business of selling aluminum sheets in these 10-15 years. He keeps saying, in the end, it about how much profit you are making from a sale.
How many of these buzzwords have returned significantly to their stakeholders is yet to be seen.
Why do we have this urge from within to be famous? It can be one being an influencer, thought leader or someone with many followers. Is it about feeling good or getting out and proving our worth to the world?
The marketers are thriving on it. Making us feel vulnerable, our quest for being famous is making them rich. We buy ads on Instagram, pay media to win founder of the year award.
I have never understood why and how this all works. In the end, it is about looking ourselves in our eyes, being honest with self.
My first Linux user group meetup was in 2001/2002. It changed my life forever. It shaped my career, got me a huge network and shaped me as an individual.
I can’t imagine where I would have been in life if I had not encountered Lug/FOSS. The network, mentoring and relationship have helped me in all these years.
I attended another Linux user group meetup after a long time. There were some familiar faces whom I had met via IRC, Twitter or other Linux events.
There was a 3ed engineering student as well in the room who reminded me of myself. My first meetup, I was clueless about what these people are talking about. The difference he had was Internet availability and better Linux distribution. He mentioned why these days meetups are not needed, the Internet has it all. I so wished to tell him how these meetups were more about connecting, meeting and learning life. Linux and technology was one part of it.
We are surrounded by people who have never done something in their life but have got a shit load of opinions. These are the so-called thought leaders, from sharing WhatsApp forwards to Facebook posts, they can be found everywhere.
These opinions and thought leaders do more harm to society than the favor. Their preaching of 10000 hours of perfection to KETO to mindfulness, ends up in creating a herd. We, humans, are so scared that we seek out for externalities for everything. From advice to the comfort we seek out instead of seeking in and self questioning.
We end up becoming followers of a mass murderer, rapists or a pedophile just because we are too scared of ourselves. We are seeking for that magic bullet in others to comfort us.
The humans came to exist centuries ago. We survived against all the odds: predators, nature. We learned from our mistakes and got better with time. We built houses, arms and formed a society.
Coming to 2019, I get a feeling that most of our current challenges have answers in the past. Our innovations are built on our past knowledge. All we need to do is to recycle. Most of our pains and miseries are no different than what our forefathers faced. Some guided us with the solution in the form of philosophy, psychology or religious text.
I find it stupid when I see the so-called thought leaders of the current generation preaching knowledge about life without giving credits to the original creators.
I have grown up hearing this term: a Growth mindset. It is all about seeing the positive side of our life. The external noise of aspiring to become someone, fulfilling a dream, crossing a bucket list is more prevalent.
It is a test for our growth mindset. The belief that failures will fade with time, success will come.