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I am a Mixergy fan, but I have been debating about canceling. It is a great show, and Andrew is wonderful. That's the problem. It's easier for me to listen t

I am a Mixergy fan, but I have been debating about canceling. It is a great show, and Andrew is wonderful. That's the problem. It's easier for me to listen to other people's success stories than to write my own. I am concerned that I spend too much time learning how to be successful and not enough time actually working on being successful. Rarely at this point do I feel that the barrier is because there is some knowledge that I did not know, but rather because of failure to ship. It's possible that my perception is wrong, but obviously I do not think so, or else I would change my perception. If I was able to contain it to one hour a week, it would be fine. But the problem is finding that one interview that is most optimal this week. He turns out too many high-quality interviews even to evaluate. It's hard for me to evaluate objectively what is the right balance between genuinely helpful consumption and genuinely valuable production. I seem to oscillate quite a bit from week to week, and so I wonder to what extent my opinion is reactionary. But my thinking lately is that I do not make effective use of the resources I have available to me. Improving the quality of the signal is only good if it makes a net improvement at some point, it is no good if the signal runs straight into earth ground. I am not saying that consumption is non-useful at all, we are at different stages, etc. I am just wondering if I have personally been overestimating the utility of consumption to the detriment of production. I also do not have a commute, so I do not have the "how do I make use of this dead time?" question that swombat seems to have. That may play a role in my analysis.

dools 14y ago
Oh hey there :) How's your biz going since we last talked? We should catch up again some time ...
AndrewWarner 14y ago
Drew, what's your biggest challenge with shipping?
- drewcrawford 14y ago
  I could write you a small novel, but the short version is, by analogy, the knapsack problem. I can fit so many tasks into my bag for [time unit]. Which ones do I pick to meet my goals? On what basis? This problem can be cloaked in many different ways: What feature do I implement right now? Should I go to the Python meetup tomorrow? When should I read the sci-fi book that guy recommended? Do I push for the refactor that the code base really needs or the refactor that the client can afford? Should I be answering the phone more or answering it less? Should I cancel my Mixergy subscription? If I can time-afford to attend N events, what is the right mix between developer and non-developer events? I make a hundred micro-decisions a day that lead to me not shipping. For each decision or decision category, I can give you some reason that makes some amount of internal sense in its immediate context. But ultimately I think I am incapable of really rationally understanding how tens of thousands of tiny choices affect my trajectory over the course of a year at decision-time. The second generation of the problem is that other people have the problem, and it has a trickle-down effect. Jim irrationally wants to put out a short-term fire vs the long-term solution to the problem. He may do this over my protest. How interested am I in shipping the project, and how interested am I in not butting heads with Jim? It is extremely hard to get the mix right between acquiescing and putting out the fires, educating Jim, and cutting him loose, and that is literally the difference between accomplishing nothing and shipping dozens of products a year. It's really a problem with rationality in decision-making.
  - dools 14y ago
    I'm trying to get people together for a Google Group of Mixergy members: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/mixergy-inner-circle https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/mixergy-inner-circle I think that it would be great to be able to discuss these types of problems with other entrepreneurs who are consuming the same material and going through the same types of challenges. I've made the group restricted only so that it doesn't get indexed by Google - ie. so that we can have some modicum of frankness in the discussion about our businesses, trials and tribulations without it being plastered all over the internet forever. EDIT: don't get excited, there are only 3 members currently (including me :)
  - AndrewWarner 14y ago
    Drew, I picked a call slot off the calendar you listed on HN. Thursday @ 3pm Eastern Time. Let's work out a way to ship.
revorad 14y ago
It's easier for me to listen to other people's success stories than to write my own. I am concerned that I spend too much time learning how to be successful and not enough time actually working on being successful. Holy cow you stole words from my brain! But, after battling with this feeling for a while, I've finally come to a working solution. The mistake I was making was taking other people's results as the lesson. That led me down all the wrong rabbit holes and left me feeling exactly as you do. What I now do when I listen to Mixergy or any other startup stuff is treat it as stories and try to learn what experiments to run, what to test within the framework of my work. I do not let any of it derail my own plans. This means I don't randomly read or listen to stuff any more. When I am working on my site's marketing, I will go and find some marketing material. If I'm working on A/B testing, I'll read up on that. And finally, sometimes I just have to let go and watch some random stuff because I do enjoy it. It's like war stories to me. Don't get down. If you're really not getting much work done, then just shut it all out for a bit and get the work done.
- BrokerChange 14y ago
  I use Pinboard to place the articles I read into buckets: * Ruby * Customer Life Time Value * Landing Page Best Practices * Etc. Then when I need to work on something for my site, I'll reference Pinboard and pull up all the amazing content I've compiled over the years (I imported my Delicious links), do sometime reading, create an action plan, and then go execute. Just my dos pesos.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
swombat 14y ago
I also do not have a commute, so I do not have the "how do I make use of this dead time?" question that swombat seems to have. That may play a role in my analysis. Definitely. As much as I find them useful, I probably would not listen to the Mixergy podcast if I had no dead time - and in fact, that's exactly what I did(n't do), when I didn't have a commute. But now that I've discovered Mixergy Premium, that is something worth making time for, imho - if, as I've said elsewhere, you can easily afford $25/m but aren't finding the time to learn various practical business skills like the ones taught by those videos.
pacomerh 14y ago
Yeah, people spend too much time watching success stories and not enough time actually creating projects. I stopped watching mixergy all together for this same reason. I tend to listen to more variety shows while I'm driving now. But my main issue with Mixergy is that it can actually get kinda cheesy after a while. Somehow I feel like they overact their role, kinda closer to the telemarketer vibe. It seems like it's a show for the "Let's squeeze some milk out of this cow" people, actually caring for the milk not the experience.

dools 14y ago

Oh hey there :) How's your biz going since we last talked? We should catch up again some time ...

AndrewWarner 14y ago

Drew, what's your biggest challenge with shipping?

drewcrawford 14y ago
I could write you a small novel, but the short version is, by analogy, the knapsack problem. I can fit so many tasks into my bag for [time unit]. Which ones do I pick to meet my goals? On what basis? This problem can be cloaked in many different ways: What feature do I implement right now? Should I go to the Python meetup tomorrow? When should I read the sci-fi book that guy recommended? Do I push for the refactor that the code base really needs or the refactor that the client can afford? Should I be answering the phone more or answering it less? Should I cancel my Mixergy subscription? If I can time-afford to attend N events, what is the right mix between developer and non-developer events? I make a hundred micro-decisions a day that lead to me not shipping. For each decision or decision category, I can give you some reason that makes some amount of internal sense in its immediate context. But ultimately I think I am incapable of really rationally understanding how tens of thousands of tiny choices affect my trajectory over the course of a year at decision-time. The second generation of the problem is that other people have the problem, and it has a trickle-down effect. Jim irrationally wants to put out a short-term fire vs the long-term solution to the problem. He may do this over my protest. How interested am I in shipping the project, and how interested am I in not butting heads with Jim? It is extremely hard to get the mix right between acquiescing and putting out the fires, educating Jim, and cutting him loose, and that is literally the difference between accomplishing nothing and shipping dozens of products a year. It's really a problem with rationality in decision-making.
- dools 14y ago
  I'm trying to get people together for a Google Group of Mixergy members: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/mixergy-inner-circle https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/mixergy-inner-circle I think that it would be great to be able to discuss these types of problems with other entrepreneurs who are consuming the same material and going through the same types of challenges. I've made the group restricted only so that it doesn't get indexed by Google - ie. so that we can have some modicum of frankness in the discussion about our businesses, trials and tribulations without it being plastered all over the internet forever. EDIT: don't get excited, there are only 3 members currently (including me :)
- AndrewWarner 14y ago
  Drew, I picked a call slot off the calendar you listed on HN. Thursday @ 3pm Eastern Time. Let's work out a way to ship.

revorad 14y ago

It's easier for me to listen to other people's success stories than to write my own. I am concerned that I spend too much time learning how to be successful and not enough time actually working on being successful. Holy cow you stole words from my brain! But, after battling with this feeling for a while, I've finally come to a working solution. The mistake I was making was taking other people's results as the lesson. That led me down all the wrong rabbit holes and left me feeling exactly as you do. What I now do when I listen to Mixergy or any other startup stuff is treat it as stories and try to learn what experiments to run, what to test within the framework of my work. I do not let any of it derail my own plans. This means I don't randomly read or listen to stuff any more. When I am working on my site's marketing, I will go and find some marketing material. If I'm working on A/B testing, I'll read up on that. And finally, sometimes I just have to let go and watch some random stuff because I do enjoy it. It's like war stories to me. Don't get down. If you're really not getting much work done, then just shut it all out for a bit and get the work done.

BrokerChange 14y ago
I use Pinboard to place the articles I read into buckets: * Ruby * Customer Life Time Value * Landing Page Best Practices * Etc. Then when I need to work on something for my site, I'll reference Pinboard and pull up all the amazing content I've compiled over the years (I imported my Delicious links), do sometime reading, create an action plan, and then go execute. Just my dos pesos.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

swombat 14y ago

I also do not have a commute, so I do not have the "how do I make use of this dead time?" question that swombat seems to have. That may play a role in my analysis. Definitely. As much as I find them useful, I probably would not listen to the Mixergy podcast if I had no dead time - and in fact, that's exactly what I did(n't do), when I didn't have a commute. But now that I've discovered Mixergy Premium, that is something worth making time for, imho - if, as I've said elsewhere, you can easily afford $25/m but aren't finding the time to learn various practical business skills like the ones taught by those videos.

pacomerh 14y ago

Yeah, people spend too much time watching success stories and not enough time actually creating projects. I stopped watching mixergy all together for this same reason. I tend to listen to more variety shows while I'm driving now. But my main issue with Mixergy is that it can actually get kinda cheesy after a while. Somehow I feel like they overact their role, kinda closer to the telemarketer vibe. It seems like it's a show for the "Let's squeeze some milk out of this cow" people, actually caring for the milk not the experience.