Strategic Growth Update

I planted seeds. Now, it's time to prune and fertilize.

For the last month, I have had a three-pronged exploration strategy:

1. Software startup

2. Solopreneurship

3. Job

I have decided to focus on buckets number 2 and 3. In addition, I am diving as deep as possible into AI (and to partition some of my time for gardening). So the strategic result is to focus on:

1. Solopreneurship

2. Job

3. AI research

4. Gardening

Dedicated Hours

While I’m searching for a job my top priorities will be AI research and gardening. Once I find a job, that will flip to concentrating on the work for that job, while continuing to dedicate significant time to AI research. Over time, I expect the AI and gardening hours to dwindle as we head into 2024. Trying to see any farther than that is a fool’s errand at this point.

There will be significant overlap between some of these categories. In particular, I imagine I’ll use a lot of what I learn from my AI research to produce solo content. Likewise, there will probably be synergies that develop between my research and the needs of my job (possibly even total alignment).

5x by Fall

I have a goal to professionally 5x myself by the autumnal equinox (September 23). I already estimate I am at about 1.2x, trending toward 1.5x—and that’s without having meaningfully woven AI into my professional stack. I’d like to think my 5x goal is conservative, but only time will tell.

Wherever I end up working, one of my goals will be to share what I’m learning, toward the end of 5x-ing those around me. If myself and my closest compatriots are all able to operate at 5x, the effect would be far greater than the sum of the parts—which would mean astounding results.

As a quick aside… I am not basing 5x on any hard quantitative data. It’s more of a feeling. I don’t think it’s possible to meaningfully quanitify what is meant by the term, and if I could quantify it, I’d likely be led astray to local maxima (rather then achieving full potential). So this whole 5x business is more of a feeling at the end of the day. That means that you have to trust me when I say I’ve reached 2x or 3x… And this is also a personal comparison. My baseline (x) is the quantity and quality of output I could achieve at the beginning of the year. It is not something like “what the average product designer could do in 2022.”

Will I still be writing articles?

I am permanently suspending the “50 days of writing.” I got what I was looking for after less than 20 days. There is no reason to force myself to complete an ongoing task whose purpose was accomplished. It was a great exercise for me to pursue. In fact, I believe that the act of making myself prepare—mentally and otherwise—for creating written content for 50 days straight was valuable. It put me in a mindset.

I paid attention to what I wrote, how I felt as I wrote it, and I occassionally looked back at the articles. Writing has been beneficial for me. It clarifies my thoughts. It also gives me an opportunity to share ideas that I’ve wanted to share for a long time (there are many I haven’t covered yet).

On the other hand, I have a very full plate of activities to execute on. They are very important, and writing for the sake of writing is not a luxury that I can afford. The compromise I have arrived at is to mandate that I write at least one article per week, with a goal of writing three per week.