How I think about work

· 883 words · 5 minute read

Following Min’an’s post yesterday, we wanted to make work a large part of our relationship. What this means for me is still something I constantly think about, but so far, it has revolved around reflecting on the kind of work I enjoyed and the kind of work I found to be drudgery.

I.

When I worked in large companies or with Min’an on our previous products, I did two things that I didn’t like upon reflection. One was that I did things based on fear rather than enjoyment. I started the day feeling energized with some idea of what I should do for that day, then I read some news and decided to do what other people were doing instead. Often, this happened for the entire week or month. It didn’t feel good.

Two was that I was not aware of when the qualitative nature of my work changed. I focused too much on salary and titles. I went to Sweden for what I thought was my dream job, but the reality was far from that. I would do things differently if I were more aware of how much product management I was doing instead of sales/marketing.

Along the way, I also learned quite a few of my weaknesses that I’m keen to address this time around. Not so much to remove it, that’ll be hard to do, but to at least make Min’an aware of it. Together, we can have a better plan to reduce the impact the next time they appear.

When working on our products, I found that sticking with a long-term direction, where I needed to continuously believe in the product’s usefulness, was hard. I need a lot of conviction that the product works, and creating a product that genuinely helps people’s lives is hard. It’s hard enough to be used repeatedly by people. So when the conviction gets low, I want to address it more publicly rather than letting it saps away my confidence in the matter.

But the mother of all challenges for me is to maintain consistency. In particular, shipping things, like writing requirements, writing posts, and creating a constant marketing campaign. It didn’t help that I had a perfectionistic tendency that made it harder and harder to ship something out as time went by.

II.

Now that we are restarting NiMBCO, it’s a chance for us to talk about what’s meaningful about work. Since we both see work as a huge part of our lives, it’s valuable to state the multiplicity of meaning we want to get from our work.

Although the reflections above are my own (I’m sure he’ll publish his thoughts one day as a post), these work principles are frequently discussed between Min’an and me. Here are four principles of work, not in any particular order:

Work as a play–ground for us to build something together. It’s a place for us to paint our digital canvas. Anything that holds both of our interests will be an excellent spot to start with. We have complementary skills to create things, and it has been such a pleasure to work together daily.

Ideas, especially the ones that, as Oliver Burkeman mentioned in his book Four Thousand Weeks, enlarge our lives rather than shrinking them. New ideas where we both can be noobs again, and definitely not creating AI to mint NFTs and sell them on the metaverse. The area must be complex enough to keep us intellectually stimulated.

Derive pleasure from working with other people outside NiMBCO. People make life worthwhile, so for our work to consume a large part of our lives, it has to connect us with other like-minded people. It’ll be lovely to exchange not just ideas but contributions with others, especially with friends.

Therefore, high-level collaboration with others limits the kind of ideas we want to work on. Any work that requires any trade secret is out. Instead, the ideas should improve as more people believe and support them.

Enjoyment of mastery. It’s about experiencing the feeling of getting really good at something. Two areas where we can focus on are validation from others and from the amount of money generated. As Derek Sivers said, if other people give you money, it’s proof that you’re giving them something valuable in return.

Mastery has also provided me with a vast sense of flow and transcendence when I forget time and place and instead continue working on the task at hand.

Work as a narrative. Story that brings order to life. The narrative is vital in providing directions when things get tough. It answers how this work fits into the historical story of where we are. For example, it’s been an ongoing trend that more and more people can work and live regardless of what passports they hold. If we work on further enabling remote working, this work will provide a narrative for us that we’re helping create the future.

What part of the news will our products be in? There has to be a spot for us, no matter how small.

As Min’an says daily to me: teamwork makes the dream work! What kind of quality do you derive meaning from your work? How much does it involve the people you work with? Let us know the next time we chat 🤩

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