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Education is Intellectual Laziness

I have been working the last couple days on setting up a bit more of a normal routine to my day. Freelancing can lead to daily schedules that are borderline insane. As I was working through how to spend my days better, the subject of education continued to creep up. How much time should I spend on upping my skill level? It is a fact that I am far from being the software developer I would like to be. Programming is a profession where more time can always be spent on learning more languages, frameworks and technologies. My brain seems to be hard-wired towards wanting to learn more.

The concept of going back to college, outside of financial considerations, really appeals to me. Spending all day learning and researching seems like a very fine way to spend my time. So there are some pure inclinations behind wanting to spend time educating myself about my profession. I have reached a point in life where I am not ashamed to admit, that I am in fact a nerd.

So as I spent time working through this daily scheduling, I kept finding myself coming back to the subject of education. I just wanted to find a way to schedule in good time blocks every day to learn and get my skill level to where it should be. But at the end of the day, multiple hours spent learning are probably no longer a realistic option.

Learning does not pay the bills. But it can help. There is no doubt that being more skilled makes you a more valuable and dangerous asset. So where do we distinguish between too much and enough. Education can be such a tasty way to waste time. At face value it is good. Then it becomes excessive. There are so many other tasty time wasting treats. Networking, Research, Brainstorming, Meetings. The list can be very long if we go on and on with it, but that would be a tasty time wasting treat as well.

Education is intellectual laziness. Education is safe, it’s clean, it’s sanitary, it’s also very artificial. Education teaches the mechanics, not the art, the execution. Without the art and execution nothing you learn in any class, workshop, or degree program will reap a full yield. “I am just learning”… “I am just getting started”… these are sayings that come with education that allow us to use learning as a shield for not acting, for not doing the things we really need to do to get what we want.

In the hands of many education can be the perfect shield. More research, more skills, just more of more and THEN I will get started on things. It becomes very hard for others or ourselves to pass harsh judgment on another for researching too much or time spent on learning. That is what makes this education shield so dangerous.

This education shield can remove deadlines and make success much more subjective than it should be. And with no deadlines and looser standards, then we can become very lazy. At the end of it all we can say “It didn’t work but I learned a whole lot.” When we say that, sometimes we are just hiding our laziness and distracting ourselves from the truth.

Today as I write, I am faced with two options in my own life. On one hand, I am currently learning the Laravel Framework for building websites, so I could spend all day working on that. On the other hand, I could spend some of the day prospecting and doing sales activities to find more work for myself. If I spend all day learning, no one will really say anything, and I can justify it in my eyes and yours too. At the end of the day though, I am doing all this to build software for clients, and the only way to get such projects is to go talk to people.

The best answer is spend some time on both. What that mix of time is, I really don’t know. That ventures into optimization and efficiency, which is another thought for another day. I do know one thing that if all I do in a given day is research and go through tutorials, despite what anyone would say I know I was being intellectually lazy.

Magic In The Rain

I like rain. The sound, the smell, the feel of it on skin. There is just something about rain. I love being outside when it is just starting to rain, when the first drops are falling. The crack of thunder, the lightning, the clouds, this is one of my favorite times.

Rain transforms the day in many ways. In a world of distractions, rain slows everything down. Rain can stop time, causing the pause we are craving. Storms are a great time for reflection and meditation. Watching the rain and just being present can be very calming and enlightening to me. There is quite simply a peace in riding out the storm.

There is just a magic to the rain. It can ruin days, it can bring life, it can bring peace. The rain triggers a relaxed state in me that leads to creativity, ideas, and the deepness of thought I crave. I just like to sit, watch, think, and maybe carve into a good bottle of drink.

The Trivialization of Epiphany

The acts of creating and innovating will often be arduous and exceedingly time consuming. To launch a seemingly simple website or app it may take hundreds of hours of programming. Books, poems, songs can take just as long. Months of effort can be consumed in mere moments by consumers. As consumers we tend not to think about this fact. We experience things, say “That’s nice” and move on. It’s not a big deal when we are hearing a song on the radio or just downloading a random app on our phone. We are surrounded by art and product nonstop, so it is impossible to really think about and celebrate all of it. We must however do more to celebrate these accomplishments when they come from our friends, families, and neighbors.

For the creators of both art and product, the moment of unveiling or launch is a mix of fear, excitement, anticipation, and relief. If this effort is the reflection of months of even years of work, this effort is not only a thing, but it is a reflection of large part of identity. As a community, as friends, there is not always a lot we can do to help our friends through their work. Creation is by design, going to have a lot of loneliness involved. After the process is complete there is much we can for our friends.

As a community and individuals we must do more to encourage these creators and innovators. As launch day approaches and arrives we need to share their enthusiasm and interest. Grown adults are spending whole weekends celebrating their birthdays with parties, trips and all other manner of jubilation. Yet when a friend launches their app, their book, their album, often there is little fanfare or excitement, and at times little interest at all. When viewed from this paradigm, society will put more excitement and celebration into simply living another year, than it puts on working and laboring to create. The acts of creating and innovating are hard enough, we should make sure not to pile on a side of apathy to these efforts.

Most acts of innovation and creation fail. Research discovers nothing, the song is bad, the app just doesn’t deliver on its purposes. Even when this happens, and it will to everyone, we need to celebrate the efforts. These people are pouring themselves into things trying to create, trying to make the world better. We need these people to keep going. Without them, nothing will change, nothing will get better, life will be bland. So next time a friend shares their life’s work with you, act like you give a damn, because if you don’t, maybe you’re not really a friend at all.

Fight Club Style Rules for Tech Communities

1^st Rule: To be included in the community you must build stuff.

2^nd Rule: To be included in the community YOU MUST BUILD STUFF.

3rd Rule: If someone tells you stop… you just keep going. You don’t quit startups and projects until YOU decide.

4th Rule: You need a co-founder or partner. Going lone-wolf is going to make you a crazy person.

5th Rule: Only one project at a time that isn’t making you any damn money. You are not Elon Musk. One fight at a time is enough.

6th Rule: You must figure shit out. That is what we do, we figure shit out when other people would give up.

7th Rule: You keep trying and take swings until you win or are broken. There are no other alternatives.

8th Rule: If you don’t have a success under your belt. YOU MUST START BUILDING YOUR BEST IDEA TODAY!

How To Win At Startup Weekend

Excited about an upcoming Startup Weekend? Think you want to try and win? Well after attending all 4 Startup Weekends here in Greater Lafayette I have a few tips for you that might just help you win.

Start Hustling Early. Get to the event early and start networking. This helps you do several things. It lets you start finding people you would like to work with. The unofficial team forming process begins as soon as you walk in the door. It also gets you comfortable talking about your ideas.
Pitch Enthusiastically. If you are pitching make sure you pitch like you actually believe in your idea and are excited about the weekend. This sounds simple but it will go a long way in attracting talent to your team. The better your talent you can collect the better you chances will be of winning.
Look Good. Friday night at Startup Weekend is a lot about first impressions. Teams form for a lot of the same reasons any group of people form. So make sure you present yourself favorably.
Form a Complete Team. Startup Weekend judging is based on three areas: business, MVP, and user experience. Make sure your team can cover all three areas. Be aggressive about filling your skill set out, otherwise your presentation will suffer Sunday.
Talk to Potential Customers. This is something a lot of groups neglect to do. The more you can gather information from potential users the better your product will be.
Sunday Is For Presentations. Spend all day Sunday getting your presentation ready and practicing. If you have a larger team you may be able to break into teams, but most of your product should be done by the end of Saturday.
Sleep. IF you try and be hardcore and skip sleeping, your team will suffer, this never works out well. Many Startup Weekend participants have made themselves physically ill during the weekend, don’t be that guy.
Present a Unified Front. During presentations have a strategy for answering questions. If you disagree with your teammates during Q&A everyone ends up looking stupid standing up there. Never disagree with your teammates, the judges don’t know any better.
Bullshit! Confidence is key, so when you are presenting, just act like you got it all figured out. No one excepts you to have it all figured out just quite yet.
Set Time Limits. There are lots of decisions to make during a Startup Weekend. Don’t be afraid to use a stopwatch to limit time on small and medium decisions. Spending hours deciding on the company name for example, is a great way piss away your time. Often the quick decision is the right decision.
No “Intellectual” Debates. Get enough tech folks together and debates are bound to happen. Debating programming languages, frameworks, and other tech is a waste of time. Pick something that works for the weekend and live with it. Debates on the product, features, etc are acceptable, but at the end of the day, no one cares if the application is built on PHP or Python.
Be Flexible. The more your team escapes their comfort zone the better the chances of winning. Be ready to try new things, Startup Weekend is the perfect environment to try new things in a relatively consequence free environment.
Judging Sheet. You should get a sheet the first night of Startup Weekend of what the judges will be looking for. Go point for point and make sure you have addressed every single thing there in your presentation, and have good answers prepared for follow up questions. Most groups don’t do this, they end up completely disregarding some aspect and set themselves very far back. You can only go so far without a revenue model or with no UX work whatsoever.
Pursue Outside Help. Look to mentors, organizers, and people on other teams for help when you need it. There is a lot of talent in the building during a Startup Weekend and only a small part of it is on your team. Look around and ask for help and advice from others, people are usually very willing to help.

So that is pretty much how I would go about winning the judging side of Startup Weekend. You can also “win” at Startup Weekend, by taking a different approach and not worrying too much about the judging. At the end of the weekend it doesn’t matter how good your MVP is ultimately, the relationships and experience is far more valuable than the end product. So here are a few tips for winning by having fun.

Network. Make sure you meet judges, mentors, sponsors and people on other teams. There are a lot of cool folks at Startup Weekends, meet as many of them as you can. If you stay too heads down on your team, you might miss out on meeting people that could be really good contacts in the future.
Just Hang Out. Spend some time not working and actually getting to know your team. This is good for both during and after the weekend, knowing who you are working with is important on so many levels.
Focus on Fun. If you want to build something fun, do it. The prizes for winning Startup Weekend are usually cool, but not so cool to give up having fun. If you hate doing something, don’t do it just to win. If your team really likes marketing, then build promo materials and forget the prototype. This won’t score points with the judges, but it might make the weekend more fun.
Go To The After Party. Plan to stay and hangout after the event, usually there is a good crowd hanging out for a while afterwards. Sometimes there is even a formal after party. In either event spend some time unwinding with your new friends, you just accomplished something pretty awesome.

Both approaches can make for a good Startup Weekend experience. Or if you have a bit of maniac inside you, and most people that attend Startup Weekend do, DO BOTH!

Beyond the Obvious

Spending a lot of time hanging out at MatchBOX, VERGE, Lafayettech, and other entrepreneurial haunts I see a lot of people selling themselves short with the ideas they are working on. A lot of people work on solving their problems. This is typically a good thing, and the source of many good ideas. The problem with these ideas are that if one is not careful then you can end up just going down the same road everyone else has. There are many ideas that are just a broken record around here.

Things I am tired of hearing about:

Anything involving college textbooks.
Grocery delivery.
Laundry services.
Social networking apps.
Anything built entirely on the Facebook platform.

We all, myself included need to start going a bit beyond the obvious. Looking for problems to solve that do not include “I am too lazy to grocery shop” or “I want an app to make friends more easier.” Yes there will be many big companies built in the future around these kinds of ideas. Just ask yourself do you REALLY want to build this? And ask yourself am I better than this idea?