Regardless of sounding like a broken record, and what might be the tenth time I refer to my favorite piece of writing. Yes, you guessed it. It's Coach Sommer's Email to Tim Ferris. I've been thinking about this a lot lately, mostly as I deal with my own temporary frustrations. It's a part of the process of getting good at a thing, I know, yet I'm not well equipped when it comes to deal with. Or maybe I am, because I'm still here, my journey has not changed. Yet, I think I can do better. I have an idea. It's mindfulness. Hear me out. Frustration, arises from expectation, the expectation is that you thought you'd be further ahead than where you are right now. At this present moment, how much does it matter? You still have do the thing, sure the outcome is not great, but the process is the same. In my case it's sit down at desk and write code. Then what is expectation? Where does it come from?
If I take my recent frustration with streaming, in that the numbers don't seem to be going up. What does that have to with me streaming? My first week almost no one showed up, yet I enjoyed it. What changed? It could be comparison, I see other streams and they seem to be doing pretty well. Ergo I should be doing better? Am I enjoying what I am doing? Absolutely, then why does it matter? Are the numbers a reflection of who I am? It might seem so, I'm mixing up who I am with the numbers on the stream. Maybe it's more complicated than that. Yet, my task is to show up, stream and go home. I stream about things I find interesting, the goal was never entertain, it was to consistently work on my side projects. Which it has been uber successful at. A reorientation of sorts was necessary. I guess the frustration server me well, somewhere along the line I lost sight of why I started streaming in the first place. Which is quite normal I would say. It's happened any time I've pursued a hard thing and it will continue to do so. It gets easier though, not what you are doing, but the arc of initial frustration to no longer frustrating is getting shorter. Most times, it's just showing up and doing the thing. Even days when you don't feel like it, especially days you don't feel like it. As it reminds you, why go into it in the first place.
Work as hard as you can
On an unrelated note, I love this tweet by Naval as part of his how to get rich without getting lucky thread.
Work as hard as you can. Even though who you work with and what you work on are more important than how hard you work.
The reason I love it is because, the latter is out of your hand. Early on you don't even know how to identify the who or what is important. The former helps you make that distinction. It's a form of clarity in a world full of opinions. There is no secret, is the only secret I've needed to realize. Which is fucking awesome if you ask me. If others have done it through sheer will and persistence, so can I. Some part of me enjoys it, I embrace that part. There is a part of me that loves being the underdog.
I bring it up because I know I can do better, although I am better than where I was, I'm not done. There is a lot more I have to offer, I want to find out what that is. Because I can.