Wanting to build things is easy.
Starting to build things is fun.
Investing the time required to build great things is hard.
The trap you need to avoid is looking for the quick wins.
Not starting something new because it “shouldn’t take too long” and seems fun.
I think the greatest skill you can have is appropriately setting expectations.
If you start a YouTube channel and expect it to take 2 years before you see any meaningful progress, you’re much more likely to succeed than someone who wants to go viral this month.
However, if you want to build a UI component library and multiple website templates in just a couple of months, you’re setting yourself up to feel overwhelmed (yelling at my younger self here).
There’s two criteria I’m starting to use for choosing what I want to work on.
#1 - Is this something I genuinely enjoy?
Do I think about getting back to this project whenever I’m not working on it?
#2 - Am I willing to spent years working on this?
This is the most important piece.
Building something great, whether it be a product or a YouTube channel takes an enormous amount of time.
If you’re not prepared to spend years refining that craft, there’s probably something else better worth your time.
Quick wins give small prizes.
links to valuable stuff I thought was worth sharing
My Biggest Tutorial Ever (Build A FULL Google Drive Clone with React, Next, TypeScript and more) - A great video if you want to learn how to build real apps with Next/React. Tons of gold nuggets about deployment settings and React tricks I never knew.
CEO of Cal.com Bailey Pumfleet: building an open source rocketship ("Stripe for Time") - I’m a big fan of Cal so this was an interesting listen. It made me think more about when open sources does and doesn’t make sense.
Thumbnail Masterclass - I’m getting back into YouTube this month and wanted to invest in something to improve the videos. This is a course on making thumbnails from Tintin Smith who worked for Ali Abdaal for a few years. So far there’s been a ton of small things I’ve learned that will be very useful.
Have a great week.
Cole
P.S. If you found this letter helpful, please consider sharing it with a friend :)
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