Life is not a race against time

When I left my last job to do a startup, I was in a hurry — as if it was a race against time.

Foolishly assuming that VC funding was the only way, I felt that I had to quickly build a prototype and raise a seed round. Then show traction and do Series A, B, C, D, E… etc.

Which meant that I needed to move fast in building the technology platform. But the problem was that I knew zilch about technology.

So how about learning some technology? No way!! The clock was ticking and every minute was precious.

So I started hunting for that elusive CTO, who refused to materialize. I then used a third party to build the software prototype. Knowing nothing about technology, I made a series of dumb technology decisions, and the prototype building took forever.

In retrospect, after quitting my job, had I calmly sat down in my house and just learned technology for 6-12 months like a curious student, I would have come out 100x better — even if I had hired a CTO later.

Having learnt that lesson, I now spend hours every day learning neuroscience, psychology, or anything that my startup HabitStrong needs.

Life is not a race against time, but against ignorance.

All this fake panic is artificially created. There is time. Take a deep breath, and learn every day — the only higher ROI activity is winning a lottery, which is not gonna happen (for most of us).

Even the slowest learning is faster than the fastest shortcut.

– Rajan

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