This post will be a collection of my favorite quotes from Paul Buchheit’s (the creator of Gmail and FriendFeed) 2014 speech. You can find the full transcript here.
He begins his talk with a very interesting point :
I’ve decided to share the technology and dreams that matter to me, with the hope that it will be very appealing to the right person. This is, after all, a business defined by outliers. Someone in this room is going to create something very important. That’s the person I’m hoping to reach.
I definitely do not consider myself to be THE person he is hoping to reach even though his talk really resonated with me and I loved everything about it. He already invested in many successful startups across many locations and he is , arguably, a very successful founder and engineer himself.
We often sweat life’s big decisions, but it is the little decisions that matter the most, the ones we make thousands of times a day without even realizing it.
I profoundly agree and this blog is all about that. I am making very small decisions through these posts, setting small life goals and growing them into larger life goals. I will reflect back on them later on and I have scheduled posts that I stopped updating to be published for far into the future.
First, I don’t know anything. That’s a warning. If you take this all on my authority, then you’re missing the point. You must own your own programming.
He is very humble despite having loads of experience and having tasted success financially and in the public eye. It is not about following his words and advice through sheer appeal through authority. Rather, it is about embracing them while going through my life and forging my personal thoughts.
Experience isn’t the only danger. Dogma and ideology are even worse. They provide us with the answers, and put boundaries around our thinking. Ignoring the dogma invites ridicule, or even punishment.
He later states that it is extremely hard to break out of dogma especially if it is prominent where one is located. Reading biographies of people I admire really helped me push the boundaries around my own thinking such as David Saint-Jacques and Story Musgrave.
The more insidious loops are the voices of doubt, anger, and self-loathing that infect our minds. Often they are the internalized voices of our parents, peers, the media, or just random people on the Internet. Other times, they pose as our own voice, possibly one that has been there for as long as we can remember. Either way, these loops are often parasitic and limiting. Anytime we take a risk or move in a new direction, they are there to doubt and criticize us. Anytime we seek to escape dogma, they are there to ridicule and condemn us.
I definitely agree and especially with my own parents, because they are the ones around me the most. The media as well, because I was told to stay informed and up to date with the world through it although it is not always healthy.
When we’re taking risks and trying something new, we should expect that it often won’t work out the way we had planned. And even if we try to keep our lives narrow and risk free, things still won’t work out the way we had planned.
I really love this one! I have already mentioned that since outcome is never guaranteed, I must make the most and enjoy any of my decisions and their processes. Never too impulsive nor too risk-averse.
I find that great startups exist in a space of productive uncertainty. Regardless of whether they succeed or fail, I’m likely to learn something interesting. In fact, I can guarantee success by simply redefining success to include learning something interesting. In this way, I’ve always succeeded, and also learned a lot 🙂
The most important aspect is to try wholeheartedly and learn. The rest is about how one perceives a success and a failure. In his approach, as long as he learned something interesting, he succeeded.
It’s tragic how many people are sacrificing their lives on some startup that they don’t really care about, in pursuit of some external success they’ll likely never achieve. Personally, I think it’s a mistake.
Again, not putting too much emphasis on the outcome, but rather on the process and performance. I should not feel like I am sacrificing my life in anything I am doing.
Don’t be discouraged by people who dismiss your efforts as trivial just because you aren’t curing cancer or traveling to Mars. The patterns I’ve presented today are about developing an independent mind, unburdened by the limitations of other people’s thinking. Then you can judge for yourself what is worthwhile, and move forward with the conviction necessary to do something great. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
No problem is too small or too trivial if we can really do something about it.
Richard Feynman
This blog is still in its very early steps and in itself, it does not solve any major societal problems that are popularized by the media, by my university, peers or any famous or important authority figures. However, it is still worthwhile for me, because it is solving my problem of supporting myself financially and to clarify my mind, emotions and life overall.
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