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* Five co-founders are too many. * If you are working on someone else's crappy idea, think about working on your own crappy idea. * Call people you might need

* Five co-founders are too many. * If you are working on someone else's crappy idea, think about working on your own crappy idea. * Call people you might need later when you don't need them. Or they tend to disappear when you do need them. * Learn about the stock market and invest right away. You'll make money, lose money, then understand money. * Build as many projects as time allows. It's nice to have the option to pick and choose. * If you don't do the thing you want to do today, 5 years from now you'll remember and wonder how different your life would have been if you did. * Don't ask people what they think about your idea. They'll either be supportive or mean to you. None of these are about your idea. * Have a conversation with someone who doesn't speak your language. Make the effort to understand them. Mr Tereso, came out of nowhere and taught me life lessons that changed my life. He spoke no English, and i spoke Duolingo level Japanese. * I'll end with this. If you are bored, create something. Make a clay pot, a drawing on paper, a JavaScript file, a wooden structure, a shoe rack, a sand castle, a matchstick home, a story. Make something you can look at the end result and you'll never get bored again...

leesalminen 8y ago
> * If you don't do the thing you want to do today, 5 years from now you'll remember and wonder how different your life would have been if you did. Love this. Reminds me of Jobs’ Stanford commencement address and Bezos’ regret minimization frameworks. I try to live my life this way, though it’s not always possible.
crankybear1337 8y ago
> If you are bored, create something. This is a bit rambly and tangential, but one thing I'd really want to emphasize is the "something" part. Sometimes it's good to decompress by just making something that's neither conventionally useful nor well-engineered, but absurd, like an inside joke taken to the extreme. A personal example: My friends and I have built an IRC bot that stores most of its code in Redis and is almost entirely developed on IRC by stuffing a bunch of incomprehensible JavaScript on a single line. It can pull data over HTTP and mangle it in various ways, it had a neural network trained with our IRC logs to generate random text, it has a Twitter client, can be used as a REPL, has a simple wiki-like database, etc. All these features are composable using an ad-hoc scripting "language" with a parser that sometimes breaks in hilarious ways. And most of the development happens when we are bored and just want to take a break. None of the code we've written for it or the technical "design" is pretty or robust. But we have a ton of fun hacking on it because we get to build something while completely disregarding whether it'll be useful or even work properly. That's why we work on it.
- Cthulhu_ 8y ago
  I should do this (build something), but I often get caught up in either perfectionism or being overwhelmed by the scope (as in, it'll never get finished if I build it to something I'm happy with). Should probably work on smaller, manageable things. A LEGO construction is doable within a couple hours.
- chiefalchemist 8y ago
  Sometimes stepping away will bring you closer. Being over-focused and over-working can often do more harm than good. I didn't understand much of what you said about your project, but it still sounds fun and interesting. Kudos.
icc97 8y ago
> If you are working on someone else's crappy idea, think about working on your own crappy idea. That's an excellent point. I definitely prefer working in small companies, then you're closer to people's crappy ideas. But still you never get the full benefit as you never take the full risk. > Don't ask people what they think about your idea. They'll either be supportive or mean to you. None of these are about your idea. There was a talk about this recently on HN [0]. Asking for feedback about your product/idea is useless because people also lie. The only way is to ask them about their problems around the area you are looking into, or else get users in to test your product and video them. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_xjb7LB7VY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_xjb7LB7VY
rntrg 8y ago
> Don't ask people what they think about your idea. They'll either be supportive or mean to you. None of these are about your idea. While I agree that some people will be blindly supportive or mean (or will lie as another comment pointed out), it sounds to me that you might be asking the wrong people or you might be allowing ego to taint your perception of their responses. In my experience, there are plenty of thoughtful, analytical people out there who can help you explore aspects of your idea you might not have considered. Those people, however, will likely only give you their honest assessment if you already have a relationship with them. For me, having a small network of thoughtful individuals that I trust (friends, family, etc) is essential. In addition, you have to be able to separate your ego from the idea so that you can view criticism of it in an objective way, rather than as simply “mean” (which it might be, but might also contain grains of truth). This is, of course, no substitute for feedback from actual customers/users, though I would argue that, in the early stages of exploring an idea, it is equally necessary.
- danielbarla 8y ago
  On the topic of asking people about your idea, I was once having a bit of a problem with this topic. Everyone seemed to "love" what we were busy with, and they'd throw in some suggestions on what else we could do to make our product more suited to their needs. I thought this was great; we're on to something, right? A little bit later, I relayed these situations to someone who was giving advice on where to take the product / business, and he pointed out that these low-effort supportive comments and "please add feature X" suggestions are ways in which people brush you off in a non-confrontational way. He pointed me to a pretty good book called The Mom Test, which goes through the reasons why this is the case, and also how and what type of questions you should ask. Highly recommended reading, it was eye-opening for me.
  - yakshaving_jgt 8y ago
    I think this advice was also in 4HWW. When you have something to sell, the difference is: > Hey, what do you think of this product? > Oh! This product looks great! I would definitely buy this! vs. > Hey, I have 10 copies of this product available. Would you like to buy one? > Oh! Umm… Well…
chiefalchemist 8y ago
> "I'll end with this. If you are bored, create something. Make a clay pot, a drawing on paper, a JavaScript file, a wooden structure, a shoe rack, a sand castle, a matchstick home, a story. Make something you can look at the end result and you'll never get bored again..." This might be the best single sentence I've read on the internet so far this year. Kudos. In short: Boredom is a function of creativity / creating. Thanks again.
- corwinstephen 8y ago
  Best part is, it doesn't even have to be something new or innovative. Even spending time creating a really excellent meal is rewarding.
  - mike-cardwell 8y ago
    I decided to learn how to bake a couple of years ago, just for something different to do. I only learnt a few things, cookies, fudge, brownies, but I found it quite satisfying. I also got to dump my creations on the people at work, which some of them seemed to appreciate. Unfortunately I work from home now so I don't have anywhere to offload, so I make a lot less.
- reitanqild 8y ago
  > Boredom is a function of creativity / creating. Often it is the other way around.
  - chiefalchemist 8y ago
    They are kinda codependent. But if you're not creative then all the boredom in the world might not save that. A sidebar question: What are video games' and technology's destruction of boredom doing to the future of creativity?
rblion 8y ago
Thanks for this. Golden advice here.
gerland 8y ago
Do you have any no-bs sources to learn about stock investments? Right now it would be gambling for me.
- linsomniac 8y ago
  The best way to make a small fortune in the stock market is to start with a large one. My ex fancied herself a day trader and spent an amazing amount of time researching trading, back-testing trading strategies, and coming up with new strategies. This was over around a decade. In the end, her "can't lose" strategy (high leveraged investment in a RITE with some sort of a "even if it fails we get our money back" option coverage) resulted in six figures just disappearing. I never got any sort of answer on what happened there, we were divorcing at the time and she wouldn't say anything about it. I'm pretty sure she didn't take it an run, she was just too embarrassed about it. What has worked best for me is: - Invest early. When I was 19 I nearly took out a $10K loan to put into an investment account, just as a sort of "forced saving". I loved the toys, so that was a good way to make sure I got money into that. I wish I could go back and actually do that. - Make sure you are taking advantage of your free money. I have a friend that isn't taking advantage of his work's 3% matching. I max out my Simple contributions. - Putting money in a low-fees investment account. I have the bulk of it in a "targeted retirement account" at Vanguard, with the target retirement age set to around 70, which keeps it a bit more aggressive right now when I don't need the money and can contribute more.
- paulgb 8y ago
  The book "A Random Walk Down Wall St." is a classic no-bs intro. (The basic message is that individual investors shouldn't try to beat the market, but should buy and hold index funds instead)
- firefoxd 8y ago
  I took a paid in person course with Income Trader. Before that, i read all of investopedia. And now I just follow Mr Teroso's advice: Invest once a month, market up or down.
wpmoradi 8y ago
This list is amazing! thank you for this! One thing I would add: *a Job pays you for your time, learn to build a anything that can solve your/other peoples pain points and the product will make you a living (best case scenario). More free time = wealth.

leesalminen 8y ago

> * If you don't do the thing you want to do today, 5 years from now you'll remember and wonder how different your life would have been if you did. Love this. Reminds me of Jobs’ Stanford commencement address and Bezos’ regret minimization frameworks. I try to live my life this way, though it’s not always possible.

crankybear1337 8y ago

> If you are bored, create something. This is a bit rambly and tangential, but one thing I'd really want to emphasize is the "something" part. Sometimes it's good to decompress by just making something that's neither conventionally useful nor well-engineered, but absurd, like an inside joke taken to the extreme. A personal example: My friends and I have built an IRC bot that stores most of its code in Redis and is almost entirely developed on IRC by stuffing a bunch of incomprehensible JavaScript on a single line. It can pull data over HTTP and mangle it in various ways, it had a neural network trained with our IRC logs to generate random text, it has a Twitter client, can be used as a REPL, has a simple wiki-like database, etc. All these features are composable using an ad-hoc scripting "language" with a parser that sometimes breaks in hilarious ways. And most of the development happens when we are bored and just want to take a break. None of the code we've written for it or the technical "design" is pretty or robust. But we have a ton of fun hacking on it because we get to build something while completely disregarding whether it'll be useful or even work properly. That's why we work on it.

Cthulhu_ 8y ago
I should do this (build something), but I often get caught up in either perfectionism or being overwhelmed by the scope (as in, it'll never get finished if I build it to something I'm happy with). Should probably work on smaller, manageable things. A LEGO construction is doable within a couple hours.
chiefalchemist 8y ago
Sometimes stepping away will bring you closer. Being over-focused and over-working can often do more harm than good. I didn't understand much of what you said about your project, but it still sounds fun and interesting. Kudos.

icc97 8y ago

> If you are working on someone else's crappy idea, think about working on your own crappy idea. That's an excellent point. I definitely prefer working in small companies, then you're closer to people's crappy ideas. But still you never get the full benefit as you never take the full risk. > Don't ask people what they think about your idea. They'll either be supportive or mean to you. None of these are about your idea. There was a talk about this recently on HN [0]. Asking for feedback about your product/idea is useless because people also lie. The only way is to ask them about their problems around the area you are looking into, or else get users in to test your product and video them. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_xjb7LB7VY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_xjb7LB7VY

rntrg 8y ago

> Don't ask people what they think about your idea. They'll either be supportive or mean to you. None of these are about your idea. While I agree that some people will be blindly supportive or mean (or will lie as another comment pointed out), it sounds to me that you might be asking the wrong people or you might be allowing ego to taint your perception of their responses. In my experience, there are plenty of thoughtful, analytical people out there who can help you explore aspects of your idea you might not have considered. Those people, however, will likely only give you their honest assessment if you already have a relationship with them. For me, having a small network of thoughtful individuals that I trust (friends, family, etc) is essential. In addition, you have to be able to separate your ego from the idea so that you can view criticism of it in an objective way, rather than as simply “mean” (which it might be, but might also contain grains of truth). This is, of course, no substitute for feedback from actual customers/users, though I would argue that, in the early stages of exploring an idea, it is equally necessary.

danielbarla 8y ago
On the topic of asking people about your idea, I was once having a bit of a problem with this topic. Everyone seemed to "love" what we were busy with, and they'd throw in some suggestions on what else we could do to make our product more suited to their needs. I thought this was great; we're on to something, right? A little bit later, I relayed these situations to someone who was giving advice on where to take the product / business, and he pointed out that these low-effort supportive comments and "please add feature X" suggestions are ways in which people brush you off in a non-confrontational way. He pointed me to a pretty good book called The Mom Test, which goes through the reasons why this is the case, and also how and what type of questions you should ask. Highly recommended reading, it was eye-opening for me.
- yakshaving_jgt 8y ago
  I think this advice was also in 4HWW. When you have something to sell, the difference is: > Hey, what do you think of this product? > Oh! This product looks great! I would definitely buy this! vs. > Hey, I have 10 copies of this product available. Would you like to buy one? > Oh! Umm… Well…

chiefalchemist 8y ago

> "I'll end with this. If you are bored, create something. Make a clay pot, a drawing on paper, a JavaScript file, a wooden structure, a shoe rack, a sand castle, a matchstick home, a story. Make something you can look at the end result and you'll never get bored again..." This might be the best single sentence I've read on the internet so far this year. Kudos. In short: Boredom is a function of creativity / creating. Thanks again.

corwinstephen 8y ago
Best part is, it doesn't even have to be something new or innovative. Even spending time creating a really excellent meal is rewarding.
- mike-cardwell 8y ago
  I decided to learn how to bake a couple of years ago, just for something different to do. I only learnt a few things, cookies, fudge, brownies, but I found it quite satisfying. I also got to dump my creations on the people at work, which some of them seemed to appreciate. Unfortunately I work from home now so I don't have anywhere to offload, so I make a lot less.
reitanqild 8y ago
> Boredom is a function of creativity / creating. Often it is the other way around.
- chiefalchemist 8y ago
  They are kinda codependent. But if you're not creative then all the boredom in the world might not save that. A sidebar question: What are video games' and technology's destruction of boredom doing to the future of creativity?

rblion 8y ago

Thanks for this. Golden advice here.

gerland 8y ago

Do you have any no-bs sources to learn about stock investments? Right now it would be gambling for me.

linsomniac 8y ago
The best way to make a small fortune in the stock market is to start with a large one. My ex fancied herself a day trader and spent an amazing amount of time researching trading, back-testing trading strategies, and coming up with new strategies. This was over around a decade. In the end, her "can't lose" strategy (high leveraged investment in a RITE with some sort of a "even if it fails we get our money back" option coverage) resulted in six figures just disappearing. I never got any sort of answer on what happened there, we were divorcing at the time and she wouldn't say anything about it. I'm pretty sure she didn't take it an run, she was just too embarrassed about it. What has worked best for me is: - Invest early. When I was 19 I nearly took out a $10K loan to put into an investment account, just as a sort of "forced saving". I loved the toys, so that was a good way to make sure I got money into that. I wish I could go back and actually do that. - Make sure you are taking advantage of your free money. I have a friend that isn't taking advantage of his work's 3% matching. I max out my Simple contributions. - Putting money in a low-fees investment account. I have the bulk of it in a "targeted retirement account" at Vanguard, with the target retirement age set to around 70, which keeps it a bit more aggressive right now when I don't need the money and can contribute more.
paulgb 8y ago
The book "A Random Walk Down Wall St." is a classic no-bs intro. (The basic message is that individual investors shouldn't try to beat the market, but should buy and hold index funds instead)
firefoxd 8y ago
I took a paid in person course with Income Trader. Before that, i read all of investopedia. And now I just follow Mr Teroso's advice: Invest once a month, market up or down.

wpmoradi 8y ago

This list is amazing! thank you for this! One thing I would add: *a Job pays you for your time, learn to build a anything that can solve your/other peoples pain points and the product will make you a living (best case scenario). More free time = wealth.