What to do

I’m at a point in my life where I would say I have enough skill to learn things and embark on a path. The more important question is what path.

I know the general direction: make things that feel like literal magic. Things that spark awe and wonder.

I met a similar “technomagician” this weekend (shoutout Andy Kong). He had fresh takes for how to decide what to do. For posterity, I’ll list them here:

You can only calculate ROI on something if you will finish it.

There is a classic example of an ambitious kid deciding to work on B2B SAAS because it will be a quick win. “I could make 10 million dollars in a couple years easily, then pursue larger goals”, he says. Andy brings up the argument that if you don’t love what you do, you won’t finish it. Thus the ROI on doing B2B SAAS is not 10 million over 3 years, but rather 0 because you will not end up finishing it.

Opening one door closes all others

Dhruv often mentions that instead of puttering on what to work on, you should just pick the first thing and start working on it. I always had trouble with this, but today I learned why. When not working on something, you have lots of potential. Without choosing a path, I would be “Krish that could do anything”. By choosing one, I effectively kill all potential by becoming “Krish that becomes X”. In other words, my internal ambition is too high to get my hands dirty in the actual work that is required.