People always ask “So what do you want to do?” I know I am not alone when I don’t have a clearcut answer, but I’m starting to realize that this is okay. For me, knowing what I don’t want to do is equally as important as knowing what I do want to do. By approaching this question from the opposite angle, I believe you start to focus your skills and talents much better, and see things much more clearly.
Now at the age of 24, I have a good sense of my likes and dislikes, and strengths and weaknesses. I’ve found that as I have gotten older, my ability to block out what I consider to be “noise” or wasteful of my time and energies is vastly improved than even a few years ago. This approach has increasingly made me seek out and focus on ‘high quality’ things in my life; friends, relationships, interests, food, travel, and work. This sometimes comes across as stubbornness, which is understandable, but I have no interest in doing something that I will not enjoy, or talking about the weather or anything else I consider a waste of time.
So what I do is use these little annoyances as motivation, and an impetus for change. This website doesn’t work the way it should? I’ll waste no time going to another one. You want to talk to me about the route you took to get here and how much traffic you hit? I’ll immediately cease talking and lose interest in our conversation. Your product is infuriating and that’s just the way it is because there is no other alternative? I hope to change that.
I am passionately annoyed, bothered, and upset by a myriad of things every day, all of which are constantly illuminating the life I want to lead, the experiences I want to have, and the company that I am going to build. So long as you can keep an open mind, fight hard against the things that you dislike and think are in need of change. Keep on fighting until whatever it is you want changed can be ignored no longer, and make that change fucking happen.
Startup In Progress 