Happier in the sh*tstorm
Hoax of a stress-free life
I thought working in fitness was a magic wand that would bring fulfillment, drive, and above all happiness.
After all, I finally found a cool thing and am building what I love doing, right?
TBH, it feels more like a part instead of the entirety of a master key.
I do feel the ecstatic joy that a random tester I met online emailed me saying that my app is bringing them value on what they were looking for as they try to run a bit more each day.
But, I also feel the dread that one man would never iterate quickly enough to bring a consumer product I envision to life as quickly as I want to.
The trend seems to get clearer by the day: Paradise is not real and it’s the lack thereof that brings about a higher level of purpose and fulfillment.
Even if I had 100 million dollars to spend on building and marketing, there would be problems: competition, the actual problem I’m solving, branding, so on.
And if I was magically able to solve all those problems, there’d be more of them. Increase in capital and traditional success can only solve money and traditional problems, and no more.
If obstacles of different scales will always be present, might as well savor the small little wins.
Below is my current slightly above-average day of work in one of my two codebases that help create Boum, an AI-driven personalized running coach. This is very objectively a productive month of work in my former job, so doing a ton right now.
Got my first direct user feedback through TestFlight, the Apple beta testing platform. While the bugs are fairly trivial, I concretely found out a beta user is so confused about something to tell me about it, and improving these particular things will directly improve their experience.
I’ve also made it a priority to get at least 10 beta users this past week and have achieved that. Through that experience I identified at least 5-10 bugs from each user, and 1-2 ways where they think the app is too confusing or not adding value to their training. I’ve been improving every day to take feedback on a less personal level, and to treat them purely as feedback on how my MVP needs to iterate on to bring more value to users.
I find myself learning through everyone around me, asking them technical questions around product iterations, making basic “sales”, and prioritization. I find it incredibly cool to ask someone a specific question about what they’re good at and getting a wealth of knowledge in return. It has been a massively helpful learning experience to learn tips and tricks on moving as quickly as I can towards a singular goal. Here’s a brutally honest recommendation on designing networking architecture from one of my mentors.
I find myself to be almost twice as good of an operator than I used to be around technical and practical product areas, and that’s comparing 1.5-2 months of solo work to almost 4 years of being a traditional engineer. Despite the slow burn and episodes of feeling lost, I’m finding my brain turning in new ways out of necessity of survival which has been more stimulating than it has been for a very long time.
So how are things going? Good! My goals are set grander than I can currently take on, so the path seems steep and foggy. But at the end of each day I see just a little bit clearer.
Thanks for reading, (p.s. — if you enjoy the posts, it’d be huge to hit that little like button and let me know, Dopamine is nice after all)
JZ, July 15, 2024.