Castaway
Our culture loves the concept of survival: being stranded in a place and living off one’s wits alone.
A castaway has only nature’s tools at hand, but they’re stuck there for the long haul. They are resource-poor and time-rich.
To survive, they must draw on an inner resourcefulness — their existence is contingent on ingenuity. They don’t, however, need to worry about deadlines.
Our own daily lives are time-poor but heavily provisioned. We’ve got all the tools we need to thrive, but we don’t have the time to enjoy them.
We love the idea of the castaway because we love the idea that man can trade resources for time, prove his worth, and find meaning in the process.
This is also why we love startups. We love the idea of a scrappy team of friends, with little money, building the next big thing.
But we also love the idea of leaving the day job; casting off the shackles of the 9–5 and really showing what we could do.
The truth, though, is that startups are as time-bound as anything. There’s stuff that needs to happen, deadlines that need to be met.
If you look to start a business because you think it’ll bring some kind of freedom — you’ll be right. It’s amazing. But it’s not the kind of freedom you’re expecting.
Our survivor is constrained by just resources and imagination. But he’s still bound by the seasons. He still needs to build shelter before the storms come in.
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