That’s the question I’ve been asking myself a lot lately. When I feel angry, I ask myself that question. Wh I feel uncomfortable, I ask that question. Usually, asking that question leads to me examining the situation from an outsider perspective, leading to much clearer thoughts and decision making.

Let me illustrate with an example: I have a very strict rule about not working on Sundays. I put it in place because I noticed a much healthier balance and productivity if I took that time off.

Today, I broke that rule. I needed to ship some last minute changes. However, I was feeling very anxious about it, so I became very irritable. My awesome cofounder was there all along offering much needed support, but I ended up neglecting it. She got visibly upset.

After I was done, I took the rest of the day off. But instead of being able to relax, I was restless. I couldn’t stop thinking about what I have done.

Previously, I would have just ignored it and spend the rest of the day trying to get distracted from it. But this time, I asked myself: What would Max do?

The answer was quite different: Max would write everything down to make sense of it, and then apologize profusely and thank for the support.

So I did that instead, and it saved the day for the two of us.

By framing the problem this way, I’ve been able to connect with what I actually want, and acting according to that has never failed to bring me satisfaction.

So, if you ever face a decision, try asking yourself what you would do in thst situation. See how that works for you ☺

Startups are hard. For us, being obsessed with our product and working tirelessly to improve it also meant sacrificing a lot.

My cofounder didn’t go to China with her parents, I didn’t go to the 50th anniversary of my grandparents. We’ve worked 12 hour days for the better part of last year, every day, day in, day out. We’ve fallen, stood up, and fallen again. We’ve fought, we’ve won, and we’ve lost. It gets lonely sometimes, and it’s incredibly rewarding some other times.

The result: We are already the largest book review site in Latin America, and books have 20x more reviews on Beek than on Amazon.

The reason I share this is because I know how frustrating it feels to work hard and not see immediate results. It takes patience and perseverance to build great things.

Let this be a reminder that great things come to those who work hard and make it happen.

Keep hammering. Make daily baby steps towards your goal, and never stop. You won’t always know the right answer, but don’t let indecision get in the way. Decide a path and move forward. Correct course if needed.

There’s only one life. Don’t waste it doing things you don’t like to do.

At Beek, we’re always looking for great developers and designers to join our team. If you’re interested, send me a message on Twitter. Thanks for reading!

But lately I rediscovered a surefire way to find ways to improve your character. It was first introduced to me in high school by a good friend of mine, but I didn’t pay attention to it until now. I’m willing to bet that it can help you discover your biggest flaws as well.

Foreword: Your ego will naturally try to convince you that you don’t actually have those flaws of character. Give it 5 minutes to sink in before secretly assuming you’re perfect.

Think about the last time you got really upset with someone. Think about what they did, and why you felt how you felt. Stuff like:

• How could he do that?
• Why is she always like that?
• Why can’t he just ______?

Got it?

Sorry to break out the bad news: That negative trait you identified in someone else is the same one you have yourself.

I’m willing to bet that if you detected that they were inconsiderate, unwilling to listen, full of themselves, etc, chances are you display the same weakness. The flaws that most affect us are the ones that we ourselves have. Blame it on mirror neurons.

I don’t know why that is. I find it to be an extremely unsettling conclusion. But every time I tried to convince myself that I don’t have the flaws I see in others, I end up discovering countless instances that prove me wrong.

Knowing your weaknesses is both great and awful. It’s great because you get to improve them. It’s awful because often times they are the shadow of your personality. All personalities have flaws, and they are usually the very same characteristics that make you you.

Getting rid of those bad behaviors feels like little pieces of you being chiseled off with a hammer. But it’s worth it.

It’s worth it.

However, when the startup is profitable and doesn’t need money to stay alive, that’s when the flock of investors turn their heads towards you and want to invest.

I’ve found this phenomenon to be true in other aspects of life as well. There have come times when I feel insecure and need reassurance about every step I take, and it’s in those moments where I feel more strongly that people around me didn’t pay attention to me or dismissed my ideas.

However, as soon as I found myself and started not caring about what others thought, I suddenly felt that others payed attention to what I had to say. It’s like that advice that gets repeated over and over about accepting yourself before seeking acceptance from others. I’ve always found that to be confusing and not very actionable.

If you’ve never felt this, good for you! Sorry to waste your time.

And for those of you who have felt it: Keep pushing yourself to be better. Finding yourself comes from pushing yourself, and once you know your boundaries and learn how to BE YOU, you’ll be free to just act it, instead of relying on the opinions of others about how to live your life.

People will judge you regardless of what you do. So might as well make it fun and enjoyable, whatever that means to you. Sounds cliché, until it sort of clicks.

It may sound paradoxical, but by being so raw and honest and being unconfident, he manages to come off as confident.

“I Have No Confidence… So This Is What I Do” @jaltucher https://medium.com/the-mission/i-have-no-confidence-so-this-is-what-i-do-6a7f495785f5

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Why do I need confidence, if I’m only in this Earth for half a second?

Surround yourself with smart, driven (…) people.

This is sound advice. Smart people will teach you a lot of stuff that you didn’t know before. However, I’ve found that we have a tendency to fight back with our own ideas once we reach a threshold of trust with the other parties.

I’ve found myself barking back at people that have very unique skills that help me grow as a person, instead of listening to them and asking them follow-up questions.

Instead, what I should do is fall back to the “Beginner’s Mind”, and absorb as much as possible from the other person. It’s hard enough to find smart, passionate, talented people with whom you can interact on a friendship basis. It’s a travesty not to enjoy that to the fullest and learn as much as possible from your peers.

For me, I find that most of the time the reason I end up talking (and interrupting!) much more than needed is that my ego gets in the way. It feels great to prove someone wrong by throwing in some irrefutable facts, but it’s rarely the best way to convey that information. When you tell people the answers without letting them arrive to the conclusion by themselves, they tend to retaliate and engage in conflictive discussion instead of a constructive one.

In the end, you can’t control what people think. Listen more, learn more, and hopefully you’ll prove me wrong.

In the startup world, I’m fortunate to have a great founder that also serves as a friend. Even though we have our differences, Pam and I always find ways to make the most out of our relationship. We push each other to the limits of our capacity, and comfort each other when we go into Overdrive for too long and end up burned out.

If you can’t think of a person you can go talk to and vent about your own problems. Without this, frustrations can go unnoticed for a long time, until they eventually explode. Don’t let it come to that point.

• Fragile: gets weaker with stress and randomness. Example: TV in living room (earthquake, hyperactive kid).
• Robust: resists stress and randomness (remains neutral). Example: A brick.
• Antifragile: gets stronger with stress and randomness. Example: Evolution (the weaker individuals suffer, the gene pool of the species improves)

Taleb argues that stable systems are fragile to ‘black swan events’, or events that happen very rarely, like a tsunami or an earthquake. And the longer it takes for a disaster to occur, the more devastating thst disaster ends up being.

However, the opposite is also true. Catastrophe A prevents an even bigger Catastrophe B from ocurring.

Take the Fukushima disaster in Japan, for example. If the tsunami hadn’t struck, the company owning the plant may have built more of the same plants, with the same procedures, so a hypothetical tsunami later on would have caused twice the damage.

Another example: you send a newsletter to 500 subscribers, and it contains a typo. That mistake, although painful, saves you the embarassment of sending a typo to 5000 subscribers a year later, after growing your audience.

This mental modal has proven very valuable to me. It has allowed me to see mishaps as opportunities to benefit from randomness and become more antifragile.

PS: College seems very stable to me… right?

If this piqued your interest about the book, click the green heart ♥ below and I’ll send you a link to buy it through Beek. I’d love to see how the book makes you feel.

Some of my closest friends read my post and reached out, for which I feel incredibly thankful. It hit me really hard that I was upsetting the balance towards work a little bit too much.

I think that’s fine to do during YC, but it definitely needs to slow down after it’s over. It’s going to be over soon.

So today was more of a release day. I feel much calmer at the end of the day, and I now notice certain things that I miss a lot. I miss my brother, who I haven’t seen in 7 months. I miss my parents, my cousins, my friends.

Really, I just want to thank everyone who wrote to me yesterday. It means a lot. And to you, you know who you are. Thank you as well.

• 6:15am — Wake up
• 6:15–6:30am — Meditate
• 6:30–7:30am — Exercise
• 7:30–9am — Get ready, breakfast
• 9am — Start work
• 2pm — Lunch
• 3pm — Resume work
• 10pm — Dinner and sleep.

Now, I don’t mind working, I enjoy what I do very much, so it doesn’t feel like I’m over capacity. But I certainly am. Today, I couldn’t get back to work after lunch. The stress of not being able to finish and launch a new feature was so high that I couldn’t concentrate to get it done. A very counterintuitive scenario. I took an hour-long nap, and later went to the movies (Finding Dory is awesome!). This and other conversations I’ve been having with Luisan Suarez got me thinking: How should I distribute my time between work time and play time?

It’s been hard to me to find a balance. Too much works leads to burnout and less productivity (like today). Too much play time leaves room for more work and get stuff done.

I think I posted about this already in this 50-day blogpost series. I clearly didn’t follow my own advice.

I don’t have any answers yet, and I would love to know how you structure your day. For example, what do you do to avoid feeling guilty when you’re not working? Is that a symptom of a bigger issue? I’d love to know.

Also, should I work tomorrow?