Stop giving interviews and focus on perfecting your craft

The disquieting attention and peaceful path to mastery

In the last 9 months for the better or worse I gave numerous interviews to magazines, blogs and other online publications. What I found out early on is the fact that when you opt to save time and agree to oral interviews, the transcript produced by the interviewer reflects his/her views on topics, not yours [0]. The end result is an interview where you say shallow things you’ve neither meant nor said.

To avoid those traps, I’ve chosen to only do written interviews: to receive questions via email and to send back the answers in text. However, I haven’t counted for another difficulty. I would take the interviews seriously [0.5] and provide long and thoughtful [1] answers to every question. These extraneous commitments which used to take 1-2 hours (when done orally) would now take an entire day [2]. The questions would touch on my experience at Collections, my essays, my blog, the origins of “Princeton Startup TV”, how my day looks like or starts, the popular websites I made in high school years, the universities I attended and the kind of work I did there, the habits and rituals I practice, the tools I use, how I got involved with startups, ’The Art of Startup’ course I taught, my career trajectory overall, et cetera, et cetera. What is common to all these questions, though, is that they all touch on your past, not the future.

So now instead of ’skating not where the puck is, but where it’s going to be’ [3], I would spend hours perfecting the misinterpretation-free answers making sure they are insightful and inspiring. The people around you including interviewers don’t know where you’re headed, they only know what you did in the past. So don’t be trapped by the past by filling your time with numerous interview commitments. Move on. “It’s always Day 1”, as Jeff Bezos likes to put it. Reach the shore and leave the boat behind. While grateful for the past and optimistic about the future, remain hungry and vigilant for the things to come. Don’t get pulled into the illusory [4] image of a local micro-celebrity.

It’s so calming to forget about the distracting world and to just be able to focus on perfecting your craft. Immerse yourself in activities which are just a little bit beyond your comfort zone. “I’m not quite ready to do this” is a good criterion to start. Lose yourself in the deliberate practice and focused thinking instead of wasting precious cycles thinking about how you’re perceived by outside. Being in the spotlight is quite pleasant, no doubt, but, unlike meditative and intense path to mastery, it doesn’t touch the core of your being. Devote yourself to your art and let it speak for itself.

Notes
[0] “We see the world not the way it is, but the way we are”.
[0.5] SeriousLEE?
[1] Trying my best to not give misinterpretation even a chance.
[2] About 8 hours of focused work not counting breaks given about 20 questions.
[3] Wayne Gretzky.
[4] Illusory and at times degrading.

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