I think the key phrase here is “I’m fine with”. The pace I’m working at (in an accelerator like YC) I’m not really fine with the waiting. But weighing that up.
I can do this somedays. Others I find myself staring at the reply panel in an email with my mind still remotely focused on the potential outcome of my last prompt. I think is what gets me. In theory, I should be able to both. But in reality: I’m 1.5x tasking: not entirely multi tasking when in comes to context shifts.
It’s true about the atrophy. On these days i find it hard to get the willpower to actually engineer. I have to set that aside to the next day. New mind. New thinking.
I have been wondering whether AI-heavy work fits the Hooked model a bit too well.
Most days I have multiple agents running. It feels a lot like pulling the handle on a slot machine. One finishes, another is already waiting. You check the result, adjust the prompt, spin up another thread, copy from one - feed the other, keep going...
Sometimes the output is bad. Sometimes it is nearly right. Sometimes it is surprisingly good. That alone seems to be enough to keep the loop going.
I'm conscious of the chaotic mental state it creates. The context switching is jarring. Code review, writing, strategy, creative, then back again. You catch yourself queuing the next prompt during a call while trying to stay present with the person in front of you.
It started out feeling like the flow-state, now I'm just tired.
I have joked “time to serve the bots”, but I am not really joking anymore.
I am quite sensitive to compulsive work patterns because I have already had one serious health wake-up call from prolonged overload. Some of this feels familiar in a way I do not entirely like.
Fit, healthy, living well.
Suddenly, I was struck down by a heart attack.
If you've ditched the 9-5, a creator, founder or freelancer, we share a number of qualities that got us here.
Yet these qualities mean it could also happen to you.
Here's how to prevent it
Qualities that make us good at what we do:
* We put others first
* We're stoic and resilient
* We solve complex problems
* We work independently
* We take responsibility
* We're constantly challenging ourselves
* We're self sacrificing the now for a better future.
Sound familiar?
These very qualities were the major contributor to THAT event 6 months ago. Let me explain why I believe this.
Don't freak out.
You can keep your side-hustle, be a solopreneur, work on multiple projects while maintaining your health, but you must remain conscious.
In short, the root cause is #STRESS.
We don't recognise our lives as stressful. Yet, it's insidious, damaging us daily.
I'll share a blog post later with more of my story.
For now, I'm going to give you the easiest to implement and highest impact changes you can make:
....
Want to keep reading? See the full thread in the URL.
Absolutely! Fear of failure. Fear of success.
These anxieties are very common in startup founders. So it's better to identify them early so they don't get in your way.
It was a 'shower thought'. I was reflecting on pretty much every podcast or written interview seems to start with the credibility of the guest. Author of a book seems to be the common theme. Creativity, philosophy, innovation that can be expressed in many ways - not only in writing a book. The purpose of my question was to survey what you all on HN thinks. I know my answer. What is yours?
UPATE: Our app did appear for a couple of days this week when searching 'DayNinja'. Now today it won't appear at all again even when using the package name search i.e. entering 'pname: com.envisageapps.dayninja' in the search. The only access is by the direct URL. Google Play!? what gives?
Ismod, sorry to hear of your experience - but I have to say that your story is not the first I have heard.
Reading this thread and many others like it over the last years I have experienced the rise and decline of the marketplace platforms but I think I have the answer.
First I'll give you some background: I have been working with remote developers since before 2003 paying our first Russian developer using Western Union transfers via the post office. We have used and (mostly) enjoyed at different times freelancer sites like rent-a-coder, odesk, elance, over the years. Upwork upset a lot of people early last year when they killed off our beloved Elance and raised their fees, then started charging hirers as well. At this time I began to question what I was actually using these platforms for? I had over 20 developers all around the world, although I had originally sourced some developers on elance, I sourced most myself from AngelList jobs, LinkedIn, Facebook groups and other channels. I had been onboarding them on Upwork (and copping the increased rate!) so I could have all the jobs in one place and to simply pay them automatically. I liked the tracking features: as although I had huge chunks of money coming out my account each week, it gave peace of mind as at least my developers knew I could dispute charges if they spent too many hours on Facebook ;)
Apart from fees I found the attempts to keep users on the platform annoying and childish. I just wanted to work with my devs on Skype, Slack, email not in their broken site (which was often down at in opportune times).
This got me thinking that the whole process around marketplaces was overdue for disruption. It served us well; however, as many of you pointed out you shouldn’t rely solely on these platforms.
So if you found a job yourself, you don’t need the marketplaces, plus you should be able to create the job yourself instead of waiting for your client.
And it came to me. Instead of marketplaces, we need a direct peer-to-peer platform to simply create a smart contact, with payment and send to the other party. Get all the security of a marketplace: i.e. escrow, tracking, proof of work but without the marketplace fees. This thread is timely as it explains the pain we are solving at http://payninja.co. We are in beta and rolling out new features over the coming weeks: cryptocurrency payments mean you will be able to pay or be paid anywhere in the world. Talking to developers in all counties we are getting excellent feedback, we are seeing that the unbundling of marketplaces back to realworld interactions is the way forward.
Just to clarify, in relation to your particular case, as we are not a marketplace the sources of trust are real, meaning: who referred the client to you, their LinkedIn profile or social network/community where you met them (as opposed to a subjective rating). You would be protected by secured funds in escrow managed for auto release by smart contract. The client would not be hidden behind an anonymous pseudonym that can vanish from the platform without warning and if they did vanish from the internet!.. the funds would be in your account. I hope this gives hope to anyone frustrated with the current state of the freelancing landscape.
