Why I work on stuff I care about

Since I left Google I’ve worked on two types of ideas.

Some I chose to work on because they were in the right market, waiting to be disrupted, and they seemed to make sense. That turned out to be a bunch of bullshit.

Others made far less sense, were much harder, riskier, more difficult and borderline hopeless. But I worked on them because they were ideas that I loved and deeply believed that against all reason should exist.

The choice is one of personal happiness.

The only lesson I learned from working on stuff I don’t care about was that… well… that I did not care to work on that. :-)

I didn’t feel accomplished, I didn’t feel good about why I was doing it, and I gave up on them pretty quickly.

I was trying to figure out what was right and what was wrong from the feedback and input of others and ended up realizing that decision by committee is a terrible way to build something that matters.

I am much happier working on stuff I care about.

Because it makes me care so much less about what others think. I can pick and choose their feedback. I can pick and choose when their rejection makes sense or when I believe they just don’t get it.

And most of the time, until something is successful, most people won’t get it. And that’s okay, because they don’t live in my head to understand what I dream of.

I understand I’m probably wrong.

A lot of ideas are wrong. Mine are no exception. I am probably ignoring a million real reasons why what I dream of is doomed to fail.

But I am happy that, even when whatever I try to make will fail, I will have lived trying to build something I really care about.

And at the end of the journey I will be able to look myself in the mirror and know that I gave it all I had, that I worked on something I believed in and not on other people’s crowdsourced ideas.

And that will feel good.