Recently I made a promise to myself - write a post a week for the next six weeks. Why? Because I think writing is a valuable part of realizing my life vision. Now that it's time to write, I don't feel like it one bit. You know what I'd rather be doing right now? Adding this button to my website, but making it pixely like the rest of the page. Fun and creative, yes. Useful? Absolutely not. Yet here I am, complaining that I'm here.

I recently built a sort of AI board of directors to help contain these urges and keep me on track toward my life vision -- more on that another time. In putting it together, I got to know myself better. I have a tendency to binge on my vices. I've managed to harness that in most areas of my life, but now it's showing its face in my work -- I like new ideas and the excitement of building them, and when it's time to grind through to 100% done, I quit for the next exciting idea. I've built dozens of tools. I've shipped exactly 1 of them. Awareness is self corrective. It always precedes change. So I'm fixing it.

Sometimes, discipline comes easily. It's easier to work out every day than work out as often as I can. It's easier to eat clean every day rather than eat clean whenever possible. You get the gist. With this work thing, discipline is different. Instead of making one choice, every time I open my computer I have to decide what to work on. It's far more fun to build cool AI tools and make my website prettier than it is to plumb the depths of my mind and find meaningful things to write about. Fortunately (unfortunately?), one of those cool AI tools I built while avoiding work that drives my vision forward now helps keep me disciplined and stay on track.

And so, with a smirk, I throw my arms in the air admitting defeat, knowing I'm doing what's best for me.

In the coming weeks, I intend to stick to my initial plan with 1,000 Spanish Words. Launch it more widely on Product Hunt, Reddit, and wherever else seems reasonable. Then market it. Try to grow it. Even to 50 users. I'm trying to take the separate skills of build > ship > market > grow and consolidate them down into a single skill, where that whole process just happens in one fell swoop and I don't view each step as a totally different project. I still have to experience market and grow, which I have no idea how to do at present moment. But I will.

The way I see this inner tension, there is the thing I want now, to build the fun new tool, and there's the thing I want later, sovereignty, freedom, and creativity with my career. Doing the fun thing now is obviously fun, but it comes at the cost of the thing I want later. What do I want more? The fun thing now or the hard earned thing later?

"Hard choices, easy life. Easy choices, hard life." - Jerzy Gregorek

Do I want to eat the cake? Fuck yea. Not this time though.

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Work Update

• Shipped 1,000 Spanish Words to the App Store
• It teaches you the most common spoken Spanish words. Only 1,000 words constitutes 80% of spoken language. Learning these words gets you well on your way to conversational.
• After I get it on the Google Play Store I intend to launch it more widely - Product Hunt, Reddit, etc. and see if I can find real users