Guiding principles I've learnt in my life thus far

How to materialise dreams

When setting out to achieve a huge undertaking, it generally seems to be better to learn just in time (JIT) rather than doing preemptive learning.

For context, I am a student software developer working towards becoming a founder. My dream is to launch an application used and loved by millions of users. For this to happen, I've been picking up skills I think I would need for the past few years.

I've worked at startups, launched my first startup which we closed after 3 months, and am currently working closely with a CEO and mentor of mine.

What I realised after all these is that learning things I thought I needed beforehand seems to be the wrong way of doing things for 2 reasons:

  1. Information overload leading to analysis paralysis
  2. Time wasted learning things which were not directly applicable

For instance, before I was able to make web applications, I looked into all the different programming languages, frameworks and packages available. I tried to "logically deduce" the best framework to use for launching startups and this resulted in me learning a bunch of frameworks and languages but never really diving deep enough to master one.

The time spent learning could have been dramatically reduced had I decided to focus on one language and framework. Less time would have been spent learning the basics and more time spent implementing challenging functionalities.

Just in time (JIT) learning means to learn something only when it is necessary. It means to begin coding your idea right now and using Google to figure out the rest along the way.

I will be intentionally using JIT in software development and in any other endeavour from now onwards.

Consistency

To achieve anything substantial, consistent effort is required.

This is the principle behind 10,000 hours to become a master at anything.

By showing up everyday for years, honing your craft to the point of perfection is how anything great is achieved.

In order to consistently show up, you need more than willpower. Willpower waxes and wanes and is unreliable.

Ensuring consistency

What I've found to be the solution to showing up daily is identity.

You need to know who you need to be to achieve your dream and start embodying it. If you were who you needed to be to achieve your dream, what actions would you take?

I need to be a proficient developer and marketeer to build a startup and so here I am, after months of consistent effort writing code almost daily, being a developer is now part of my identity and I am always excited to build. My marketing needs work and that is what I will be diving into next.