I've been struggling with motivation in recent months so have been writing todo lists as a way to stay on task. One technique that has been helping is to write

I've been struggling with motivation in recent months so have been writing todo lists as a way to stay on task. One technique that has been helping is to write all steps, even when I don't know how to do some of them yet. Normally I do the opposite and only start working after I've solved the entire problem in my head (which sounds crazy but worked up until I hit 40 and bigger life questions added too much distraction). Anyway, what if some failures are unavoidable? Like, what if some things are external to what you can anticipate or accomplish? For example, here is a todo list for a typical startup: 1) Learn the tools so you can make stuff 2) Optionally find a handful of teammates with similar interests or pain points to help 3) Get funding 4) Work on your startup for 6 months to 2 years 5) Get traction by hard sells or going viral 6) Scale by improving the product, adding employees, etc 7) Exit and move on to the next startup or retire with millions of dollars There is currently no solution for steps 3 or 5. The rest of the steps are straightforward and done by most software developers in one form or another dozens of times over a career (except for 7 obviously). Most people on the outside only see steps 2, 6 and 7 so have a distorted view of the startup process because those tend to be the easiest steps or take care of themselves after the startup acquires a life of its own. On top of that, they may only dream about startups because step 1 tends to depend on demographics. Step 4 (the part we care about because it’s our lifestyle so we’d almost do it for free) tends to be the least important, but also the riskiest because your idea will manifest when someone else does it after the 2 years window of opportunity passes. So as far as I can tell 20 years into my career, until we solve steps 3 and 5, startup failure will hover around 90% or more. Learning from mistakes only eats away slightly at that number, perhaps by giving people more of what they want in step 5, or expanding your professional network for steps 2 and 7. So the smart thing to do is play it safe contracting or working for companies, never accomplishing anything of any importance other than making rent or raising children like humans have done for thousands of years. So since it’s Friday, I’d like to put out a thought to meditate on that maybe we should be trying to make a startup to solve startups, along the same lines as what Y Combinator is doing.