March 6th, 2022
Last night, I chilled with my friend Alex, who designs and builds his own guitar pedals. As we sat around in his apartment, he mentioned how he loves the multi-modality of his craft.
He was describing how some days, he enjoys designing the decals on Photoshop, whereas on other days, heād rather be planning the circuitboards and coding in Arduino.
While I canāt play guitar or plan a circuitboard, I immediately identified with his experience.
Being a side-project addict is so much more fun than my full-time job. Whereas at work as a data support engineer, Iām bouncing back and forth between documenting databases and writing SQL queries, working on a side project contains an infinite amount of possibilities.
Last week, I shut down Wellness-Tech Biweekly so I can focus my creative energy and time on Brain Blasts. Now, in a given afternoon, I can spend my time writing threads on the Chirr app, writing long-form articles in Substackās editor, or planning out the next podcast in Notion.
I often envy people who can focus entirely on one craft. But, I know my nature, and I am addicted to novelty and creating.
Ever since I was a kid playing around with green screens, Iāve loved trying out new software. Because there will always be more software getting released, I will never stop trying out new forms of creativity.
On previous side projects such as my advertising agency, Iād spent most of my time in Facebookās ad center, Googleās ad center, and Photoshop. I love Photoshop, but Facebook and Googleās ad centers both are confusing and infuriating. Thereās a reason why I switched to coding.
As Iām reflecting on this, Iām thinking about the mental model of minimizing the time spent on things you hate doing.
Iām wondering how do I get to the point with Brain Blasts where I do nothing I hate doing?
My hate-doing list includes
- Ad copywriting
- Ad orchestration
- Filing taxes
- Long-form video editing
I guess the answer is to simply never start running ads (or pay someone to), make sure I pay an accountant, and find a video editor once if my TikTok grows.
I think I can do this.
See below tweet (3) for my love-doing list.
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