A Practical Thought on Life: Part 2
Thoughts on Commitment
This post explores thoughts on commitment that arose since I left my full-time role in product marketing 10 weeks ago to pursue side projects. If you’re interested in the background on my decision to leave, see this post.
Growing Pains
I am pretty tall, and most of that height hit me around 8th grade. The backs of my knees were very uncomfortable and tight that year, as if the growth in my bones was stretching my leg muscles until they hurt. The rate of change was uncomfortable.
Adjusting to working effectively on my own brought similar growing pains. My job provided a steady supply of problems to solve in a comfortable and safe setting. Without those challenges, my energy and thought had no sink. I needed to create my own problems.
As a result, my energy went in a million different directions. More rabbit holes were explored in two weeks than I had energy to explore in two months with a full-time job.
However, one single thing did not end up sticking out among the others. As soon as something became difficult or dry, I jumped to another interesting project. Nothing kept me on one project, and pursuing diverse avenues was exciting.
Within a few weeks, all the different directions my attention flowed in made it apparent I wouldn’t be able to grow this way. There was not much to show for my time and energy. There was no building a skillset, making an income, or feeling the deep connection to a craft that one can only feel after working tirelessly on it.
Working on a single thing for a long period was uncomfortable at times. Writing this is often uncomfortable. But it is those hours doing one thing that make you better.
Support systems are a must in order to endure those uncomfortable times. For me, support came through community. I have my old manager, Sherene, and Head of Product, Aly, to thank for this advice. It took me a while to follow it, but I now have an accountability system in place for staying on track towards my goals. More on that in the next section.
My days now are not necessarily more fun than the ones spent following my every whim, but there is a sense of connection to a future that takes deliberate building. That is worth a few tough days along the way.
That period of painful growth taught me another lesson, about freedom.
Commitment can free you more than freedom
The decision to leave my job was partly motivated by the ideas in Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Antifragile. Taleb has a simple point: Given the only constant is change, systems (and humans) survive by picking many uncorrelated bets that have more upside than downside.
He says we heap attention and importance on those who attempt to predict the future, rather than those who assess payoffs from all possibilities. I wanted to apply those ideas in my own life, to test a bunch of options and see which paid off. Working on several side projects seemed to me an immediate way to live that out.
About 7 weeks in to my experiment, in the midst of thinking about all the options consuming my time, I reread a speech about commitment. Here’s a quote:
“It is precisely our restraints that liberate us for that higher freedom. You have to chain yourself to years of piano practice to have the freedom to really play.” — David Brooks
It contrasted heavily with Antifragile, but it struck a chord. A few weeks in to my experience, nurturing different options did not feel like freedom anymore. Managing each required constant context switching and reevaluation. The question of which projects were still worth pursuing came increasingly often.
As time went on and interesting projects came in to my world, more time was spent evaluating which bets were worth it than working on making those bets pay off. In my quest for more choice, creating something lasting and important fell off my radar.
I have my girlfriend, Serena, to thank for waking me up to this trade-off its impact on my life and those of people I care about.
Thanks to Serena’s nudging, I created strong commitments. My friend Marley backed them up with ruthless consequences. Failure at any of them will require a public explanation on social media.
If you are interested in the commitments I made for April, here they are:
- Quintuple readership on my crypto/blockchain news and events in NYC newsletter. (Sign up here!) —I do not like promoting my own work. This commitment will force me to produce a valuable newsletter that I believe people should read.
- Publish 3 blog posts that get over 50 claps on Medium. — This will force me to practice writing and create work that people value. Best of all, this forces me to take half-baked ideas and form them into polished pieces worthy of reading and criticizing.
- Get 2 speakers to commit to an event (or at least reach out to 50) — This will make me think critically about the mutual value I can create for speakers and attendees, and then hustle to convince them to come onboard.
Thank you to my girlfriend Serena, my roommates, my friends, my parents, and everyone else who have supported me throughout the ups and downs of life! If you’ve left your job or are considering a move, I hope this post was helpful.
If you enjoyed this reflection, please clap a bunch! For background, see part 1. Look out for part 3 of this series, on experiencing vs reflecting.
