Quotes in this post courtesy of BrainBun Labs in the article, I conditioned myself to fail.
This article from BrainBun hit a little too close to home. I want to start a business, or sell a product, or something. But, I know that there's something that's holding me back. I think that it might be what the author talks about here.
Today I think I finally figured out what’s causing it.
I became an information junkie over the years.
That’s right, I’m addicted to information. I get my dopamine from feedback, from new information.
When I’m building something, that information is the thing coming to life in front of my eyes, every new button etc is awesome. I can see the changes in the UI from the code I’m writing.
But then when I launch, I either don’t get much feedback at all, or I get a lot of feedback for a day, which then dies down completely after the launch.
And I can’t find the motivation to get back to work.
For me, I will quickly launch myself into a project, or a new technology to learn, and then my focus changes when the work actually gets hard. I tell myself, "Well this actually isn't pushing the needle." But, that's not true always.
But, I also avoid doing the hard work by doing the opposite too. I'm in the middle of a larger project that I will use as an excuse to put off working on something that would actually start my business.
The constant mantra, is "I need to learn more about X to do that." It is the first thing that I think when I get a piece of business advice, but it would be better to take Noah Kagan's advice "Now, not how."
I partly blame the algorithmic feeds a la Twitter/X. It’s a lot easier to get your dopamine from reading than it is from building.
Take action. Be naive. Look stupid. Make mistakes.
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